On Being a Jew in China: A Personal Memoir

China is a country where an ancient but small Jewish community was finally assimilated, leaving few traces, and where there is no historic record of specific anti-Jewish discrimination or persecution. Baghdadi Jews were the earliest modern-era arrivals in Shanghai. The third and fourth decades of the twentieth century brought German Jews fleeing from Hitler. The Tianjin Jewish community's main economic base was trade in furs, skins, and other animal products such as sausage casings. The most important and frequented Russian-Jewish social center in Tianjin, with virtually universal membership irrespective of views, was the Kunst Club. The German-Jewish writer Heinz Shippe had been killed by the Japanese in 1942, while accompanying Communist-led troops in the embattled areas. Tianjin's Jews took to the Anglo-American passion for sports. In income, the higher levels among the Tianjin Jews corresponded to the middle or lower incomes among socially prominent resident gentiles.