Voices
Japan, not China, deserves credit for saving Jews
Like Ivan Schlapobersky, I, too, am proud of the supportive visit to China Mall by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, and I also haven’t heard of any anti-Semitism by the Chinese.
Ellen van Hoogstraten, Johannesburg
However, he is mistaken in giving credit to China for the refuge granted to Jewish refugees in Shanghai during the Holocaust. China lost Shanghai to the Japanese during the 1930s in the Sino-Japanese wars, and it’s Japan, with a major contribution by the Japanese consul in Poland at that time, Chinua Sugihara, which deserves the credit. The Japanese also accepted into the city of Kobe several hundred Jewish refugees from Europe. My research hasn’t yielded a single instance of such beneficence from China.