Shanghai Ghetto

Description

One of the most amazing and captivating survival tales of WWII, the overwhelmingly acclaimed SHANGHAI GHETTO has been declared "a don't miss documentary...powerful...eye-opening" (New York Observer). Stirringly narrated by Academy Award winner Martin Landau (Ed Wood, The Majestic), SHANGHAI GHETTO recalls the strange-but-true story of thousands of European Jews who were shut out of country after country while trying to escape Nazi persecution in the late 1930s. Left without options or entrance visas, a beacon of hope materialized for them on the other side of the world, and in the unlikeliest of places, Japanese-controlled Shanghai. Fleeing for their lives, these Jewish refugees journeyed to form a settlement in the exotic city, penniless and unprepared for their new life in the Far East. At the turn of the new millennium, filmmakers Dana Janklowicz-Mann and Amire Mann boldly snuck into China with two survivors and a digital camera to shoot at the site of the original Shanghai Ghetto, unchanged since WWII. Their never-before-seen recordings--along with interviews of survivors and historians, rare letters, stock footage, still photos, and an orignal score by Sujin Nam and Chinese Erhu performer Karen Han (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon)--depicts an incredibly moving portrayal of a rich cultural life, bravely constructed under enormous hardship. DVD Features: Filmmaker Commentary; Deleted Interviews; Hebrew/English Subtitles; Theatrical Trailer; Filmmaker Biographies; Interactive Menus; Scene Selection

Customer Reviews:

A must see!.......2007-08-07

I saw this film initially at the SF Jewish Film Festival. Before this initial viewing I was unfamiliar with the imigration of Jews to Shanghai during the holocust. The film is informative and beautifully made. A must see for WWII, hollocast and documentary film junkies.

worth watching.......2007-05-13

Shanghai Ghetto is an intriguing documentary about Jews who were allowed to leave Nazi controlled areas and go to China. The narration is matter of fact. The interviews with survivors are a little repetitive but informative. For people who think they have seen as much as there is to discover about the Holocaust, this is a welcome addition to the archives.

"Shanghai Ghetto" and "Ten Green Bottles" - Amazing Combination.......2007-05-02

Recently our reading group leader put together an exceptional evening in which we reviewed the book "Ten Green Bottles - The True Story of One Family's Journey from War-torn Austria to the Ghettos of Shanghai" by Vivian Jeanette Kaplan and then saw the video "Shanghai Ghetto", directed by the Mann's. Both the book that we had read and the DVD that we saw were excellent in their own right, but together they so perfectly complemented each other that the total experience was truly outstanding and the best we had ever had.

"Ten Green Bottles" is a beautifully written story about a Jewish family who lived in their highly cultured city of Vienna until the Nazi's came and were barely able to escape to Shanghai. There they tried to survive under Japanese occupation and amid a city of both unbelievable poverty for most and unbelievable wealth for the privileged few. The book is written in the literary non-fiction genre with dialog and in the first person of the heroine, the author's mother, so that you experience her life in Vienna and Shanghai as if you were in her skin. When the old movie footage and pictures, recent interviews and visit to Shanghai of the people of the video "Shanghai Ghetto" were added to this, it made you feel as if you had experienced all of what we had read and saw as if we were actually there.

It was a truly amazing combination.

A little-known story.......2007-03-30

This film, inspired by director-producer Dana Janklowicz-Mann's own family history (her grandmother and stepgrandfather fled Germany for Shanghai in 1938, along with her then-eight year old father), tells the story of a little-known chapter of WWII. When the world closed its doors to untold amounts of people desperately trying to escape Europe before the Nazis devoured them, or played the rules and regulations game as though bureaucratic red tape and ridiculously small yearly immigration quotas that were never even filled should have mattered when lives were at stake, Shanghai gave them shelter. This was the only place in the world at the time that didn't require an exit visa, and it was also just before WWII, when the Jews of Germany and Austria were still allowed to leave instead of having even their own borders closed to them. Though there was a thriving thousand year old Jewish community in China, Shanghai was largely made up of three rather recent groups. The first were the wealthy Iraqis, who had come with the British in the 19th century; the second were the Russians who had fled after the Revolution and Civil War; and the third were the Germans and Austrians (later joined by some Poles who managed to escape through Siberia; as it's pointed out in the audio commentary, the story of the Shanghai Poles was left out due to time considerations and because the main story was already built around the experience of these Germans, not because it was deemed unimportant or because the producers didn't know about it).

Shanghai was an international city, with a thriving multicultural community; this wasn't a place where the refugees found themselves the only non-Chinese around for miles. And with rare exceptions like the powerful bureaucrat Goya, all of the Chinese were so nice to them. Though most of them had never met any Jews before, there wasn't a whiff of anti-Semitism in the air. They saw them as people who were suffering just as they were, who had been forced to leave their homes and families behind. And though the native Chinese did have it even harder, the Germans too had to go through hunger, disease, poverty, crowding (though the ghetto referred to in the title wasn't anything like the Warsaw Ghetto or Lodz Ghetto; it was more like a Medieval ghetto, just a small segregated area of a city), and the Japanese occupation. However, they actually fared much better than the Chinese under the Japanese occupation, because the Japanese were operating under the anti-Semitic stereotype of Jews being powerful and controlling the world, and didn't want to make this large new segment of the population angry, for fear there would be far-reaching repurcussions. They also treated the Russians well because they had fled from the Bolsheviks, whom Japan was at war with, holding true to the old line "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." At first the Germans had been being taken care of by the Iraqis, but after Pearl Harbor they were sent to internment camps (being British subjects) along with all of the other citizens of the Allied forces living in Shanghai. The Russian community stepped to the fore to take care of them, though they weren't quite as well-off as the Iraqis. They were also taken care of by Laura Margolis, a social worker with the JDC, even though she had to get money from local businesses and government agents to afford these services after Pearl Harbor, when America stopped giving financial aid to this land controlled by an enemy force. Yet from these harsh living conditions they managed to make a thriving community for themselves, with schools, athletic associations, religious life, cultural programming, newspapers, and literary magazines. And though things were really rough for them, as they found out after the war, they had been living in a paradise compared to the people left behind in Europe.

Extras include audio commentary by producer-directors Dana Janklowicz-Mann and her husband Amir Mann, film-maker bios, a trailer, and three additional interviews. Overall, it's a powerful and fascinating look into a little-known saga of WWII.

A Documentary Film that touches the heart and answers many questions........2007-01-05

Shanghai is a fascinating city. It has always been. It has historically been one of the most cosmopolitan spots in the World. This film explains clearly and directly why so many Jewish families had to leave Germany during 1938 and 1939, and went directly to Shanghai, and not to other European or American cities. The story is set out in a very simple way and it is told by the actual people that lived the experience. It touches the heart and it produces vivid emotions. Shanghai Ghetto is a really beautiful documentary film. A must see.

J.J.Harting

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