Jewish cafe in Shanghai to be restored The White Horse Cafe, also known as the White Horse Inn or Das Weisse Rossl, a popular venue for Jewish refugees in Shanghai during the 1930s and 40s, will be restored and opened to the public in October. The reopening of the Jewish cafe near the historical Tilanqiao Prison in Hongkou District is timed with the commemorations of World War II that ended 70 years ago. Tuesday marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. The systematic murder of millions of European Jews in the Holocaust showed anti-Semitism at its most monstrous. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Shanghai in May 2013 and hailed the city’s role as a “haven” for Jewish people fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe in the 1930s and 40s, his comments highlighted a part of the city’s history that many contemporary residents don’t know. From 1933 to 1941, Shanghai accepted almost 30,000 European Jews who escaped from Nazi Persecution and the Holocaust. Excluding those who left Shanghai for other countries, by the time of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the city was sheltering 20,000 - 25,000 Jewish refugees. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center on Holocaust Studies, Shanghai took in more Jewish refugees than Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India combined. Like “Schindler”, “Wallenberg” and “Sugihara”, the name “Shanghai” has become synonymous with “rescue” and “haven” in the annals of the Holocaust. The cafe around the corner of Changyang Road and Zhoushan Road will sell coffee and serve as a Jewish refugee memorial. The cafe was founded in 1939 by a Jew named Rudolf Mossberg with relatives and friends after he bought a three-story house there. The cafe soon became popular among the 23,000 Jews living in the district. After the war, the Jewish refugees left Shanghai for other countries and their community began to vanish. The house that was once the White Horse Cafe was demolished in 2009 for the widening of Changyang Road. District officials said the restoration of the White Horse Cafe is intended to preserve the history of Jewish community in Hongkou District and turned the area into a tourist destination. Atlantic Cafe, another popular haunt of Jewish refugees in the district, was restored in 2013, using the original shop sign from the 1940s.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 11:03:00 +0000