More than a transit port, but less than a refuge : Hong Kong and Jewish refugee transmigration, 1938-1941

This thesis examines and situates Hong Kong within the context of Jewish refugee transmigration between 1938 and 1941. The necessity for Austrian and German Jews to escape persecution in Europe meant that some fled across the globe to Shanghai. However, the dominant image of Shanghai as the sole Jewish refuge in East Asia downplays the role of intermediaries along the path to safety. Centering on Hong Kong, I argue that these sites facilitate the movement of refugee Jews but also acted as refuges, albeit temporarily. Furthermore, I argue that Hong Kong specifically cannot be easily categorized as either. In addition to its role as an in between place or transit point, Hong Kong was also a temporary refuge for a small minority of escapees. Responses towards Jewish refugees emphasized either the individual‘s Jewish-ness or German-ness, both unstable and fluid social categories. I argue that the charity provided by local Jewish leaders to their refugee co-religionists was a way to avoid reifying older stereotypes of Jewish migrants as destitute, and to maintain the privileges held by Jewish elites. In contrast, the Hong Kong government was apathetic towards these refugees, until the outbreak of the Second World War, after which these individuals were primarily viewed as Germans or enemy aliens. The eventual Internment of such Jewish refugees at La Salle College represented a major manifestation of the perceived German threat. Despite local officials knowing that Jewish refugees were among those interned, German-ness was constructed and linked to the individual‘s nationality and passport. Scrutiny over characteristics of German-ness by local officials intensified in June 1940 with controversial decision to expel all enemy aliens from Hong Kong. I contend that this action can only be understood by considering larger geopolitics. In light of the rapid occupation of France and the Low Countries by Nazi Germany, as well as the Japanese occupation of South China, Hong Kong officials panicked. I argue that Hong Kong was more than a transit point, but less than a permanent refuge.Arts, Faculty ofHistory, Department ofGraduat

Hong Kong as Entrepot: Jewish, British, and Chinese Refugees in Hong Kong (1937-1947)

University of Toronto Libraries Undergraduate Research Prize Winner 2017. The University of Toronto Libraries Undergraduate Research Prize awards undergraduate students in any first-entry faculty across the University of Toronto’s three campuses based on their effective and innovative use of information sources. This prize provides students with an opportunity to reflect on their information-seeking experience, showcase their research to an audience beyond the classroom, and promote scholarship excellence at the undergraduate level at University of Toronto. Please visit the Undergraduate Research Prize website https://onesearch.library.utoronto.ca/undergrad-research-prize/criteria for more information about the award, including submission guidelines.This project looks into Hong Kong as a site of refugee transmigration during the Second World War. Focusing on Jewish refugees, this paper compares their experiences to British and Chinese refugees that transited the Colony in regards to government and community responses. It is discovered that Jewish refugees faced multiple barriers and obstacles – visa requirements and lack of direct government assistance, and relied more on the local Jewish community. What is interesting is that Jewish refugees occupied an ambiguous position in Hong Kong’s colonial hierarchy: white, but lacked the wealth associated to it

Intersections between Jewish Studies and Habsburg Studies

In the aftermath of the Shoah and the ostensible triumph of nationalism, it became common in historiography to relegate Jews to the position of the “eternal other” in a series of binaries: Christian/Jewish, Gentile/Jewish, European/Jewish, non-Jewish/Jewish, and so forth. For the longest time, these binaries remained characteristic of Jewish historiography, including in the Central European context. Assuming instead, as the more recent approaches in Habsburg studies do, that pluriculturalism was the basis of common experience in formerly Habsburg Central Europe, and accepting that no single “majority culture” existed, but rather hegemonies were imposed in certain contexts, then the often used binaries are misleading and conceal the complex and sometimes even paradoxical conditions that shaped Jewish life in the region before the Shoah. The very complexity of Habsburg Central Europe both in synchronic and diachronic perspective precludes any singular historical narrative of “Habsburg Jewry,” and it is not the intention of this volume to offer an overview of “Habsburg Jewish history.” The selected articles in this volume illustrate instead how important it is to reevaluate categories, deconstruct historical narratives, and reconceptualize implemented approaches in specific geographic, temporal, and cultural contexts in order to gain a better understanding of the complex and pluricultural history of the Habsburg Empire and the region as a whole