CHAPTER 32

VICTORY 1945

All day long tension bristles in Hongkew. Poldi and I meet with the others to exchange information. Wherever there is a functioning radio, we huddle around to learn the latest developments. More frantic Japanese suicide missions are reported, as well as further destruction and fatalities. Finally the Americans lose patience. The next day, we can hardly believe the newscasts: the United States has dropped two atomic bombs. The first explodes on August 6, on Hiroshima, the second on August 9, on Nagasaki.

All of us in Hongkew are thrown into a state of confusion, vacillating between exhilaration and anxiety. Is it really over? On August 9, the very day of the bombing of Nagasaki, the Russians declare war on Japan, flinging their hat into the ring of battle at the last minute. On August 10 newsletters appear from nowhere and are dispersed all over the ghetto. Someone tells us that Allied flags have been seen flying over public buildings in Shanghai, and there are bursts of rejoicing, but this elation is soon dampened by bad news – refugees living in Manchuria are in danger of reprisals from Japanese authorities.

Poldi looks concerned as he scans one of the most current flyers. “What about Leon Druck?” he asks.

I hadn’t thought of Leon for a long time. All through the bombing raids and the devastation of Hongkew, we had no chance to write and no way to receive any communication from outside Hongkew. Now I am reminded of Leon’s help and courage, his devotion to Poldi and kindness to me, and I become as worried as Poldi is.

“Is there any way to get word to him? What can we do to help him?” I ask.

“I don’t know. We’re still prisoners ourselves. I can try to speak to someone in the underground. If there is any way to help him, I’ll do it. He has been like a brother … well, in some ways more than a brother to me,” he says, making an oblique reference to Dolu, who has been silent through most of the latest turmoil.

For another two weeks life is uncertain. The British and American flags that had been hung briefly throughout the city have been torn down from their perches. Sporadic shows of victory celebration in the streets of Hongkew have been curtailed by the increasingly forceful Japanese command. The Japanese government has officially surrendered but paradoxically we remain under siege. Again we wait, and each day our situation is more precarious than the one before.

One early morning in mid-August, just after daybreak, we are awakened by the sound of a whistle and the shout “Wake up, wake up! The guard is gone! The Japs have left! We’re free, we’re free! The Yanks are coming. It’s over, it’s over at last!” Rushing to the window, we see a young man, wildly blowing his Pau-Chia whistle and running up and down the street, still shouting.

We burst out into the street with many others, half-dressed and rubbing sleep from our eyes, to discover what has happened. Sure enough, there is no guard at his usual post, at the end of Tong Shan Road. The Japanese flag, its dreaded red rising sun insignia familiar to us and despised, has been removed. Marching boldly down the main street are soldiers, bearing the unmistakable air of victors, calm and confident. To our relief, delight, and incredulity, they are Americans.

The strong young soldiers are striding casually towards us, tall, smiling, and relaxed. We overwhelm them with our welcome. Women and children rush towards the uniformed Americans and throw their arms around their necks, or tug at their sleeves, kissing their hands. Old men, hands clasped together, pray in gratitude, eyes upturned to the sky. Joyful tears flow. We are dancing, twirling on the crumbling pavement of the street, laughing and crying at once, unable to bottle our emotions for one moment longer.

Poldi grabs me in his arms and swings me round and round. The world is spinning around us and we are giddy with the pleasure of freedom. We kiss and passers-by shake our hands.

“Victory! Victory! At last it’s over,” Poldi shouts and others respond with calls of their own, and fingers raised in a “V” for victory symbol. Our Chinese neighbours bow to us and we to them and there is so much joy that we feel we might explode.

“I love you,” I say to him and he responds, “How wonderful life is. How grand to be alive!”

We go to find the others in the family, feeling the lifting of the burden that has weighed us down for years. Willi, Walter and Stella, Erna and Fritz with Lily, all are there in the street and we embrace, surrounded by ruins, with no thoughts of the future, nothing but this one moment of unrestricted joy. Kurt, his hand nearly healed, and Elsa are there too and we embrace them.

Like children, we enthusiastically hug friends, family members, and strangers who emerge from bomb-ravaged homes. We clutch one another in long, tight embraces, wanting to hold on forever.

The sounds of our joyous celebration are interrupted by the welcome rumble of army trucks. As they roll into sight, we see their characteristic splotches of camouflage paint, now splattered with mud, their red, white, and blue Stars and Stripes flags waving as a freedom banner. All around us everything is in shambles. The painstaking work we had put in to repair and restore the dilapidated structures has been demolished again. Now, the conquering heroes march into the midst of our incarceration and appear baffled by the sight of us here, a secluded community of malnourished Europeans tucked away in this forlorn corner of Shanghai. We are caught in the throngs of barefoot Chinese, children in rags, shell-shocked men and women, the old and the sick, all making their way towards the Americans, our skeletal arms outstretched. I grasp Poldi’s hand tightly for fear of losing him in the crowd.

The Americans have brought food such as we have not seen or tasted in years. Glowing with joy, we surround the soldiers, eagerly anticipating our share of their plentiful supplies. At last we believe that the war is over and that we have truly been saved.

American aid flows once more, and within a few days the United Nations Relief Agency, UNRA, begins to supply vast quantities of food. Soon we have chocolate bars, tins of cooked chicken, butter, biscuits, cured ham, instant coffee, canned milk, cocoa, and fruit. After the hardship and deprivation of the past six years, we are overwhelmed by the arrival of so much at once.

Over the following days, people talk of the future – where they will go, what they will do, and most importantly, how they will do it. But most of the inhabitants of Hongkew decide to stay where they are. The community has achieved a solidarity that we did not really anticipate. This ghetto and the organizations formed to deal with life in this tiny inhospitable patch of Shanghai have united various groups who had nothing in common. The Orthodox Jews with their characteristic black hats, beards, and sidelocks have merged with the least religious factions among us, melding us into one people simply because our enemies threw us together. The foundations of a community exist here, and there is already a movement underway to begin rebuilding.

As a sign of returning normalcy, mail delivery begins, though it is sporadic. “Nini, I have a letter from Leon.” Poldi waves a battered envelope as he rushes in the door. “The Japanese didn’t have a chance to retaliate against the refugees in Harbin, and he has just received confirmation from New York that he has a visa to go there. He’s leaving soon and wants us to apply as well.”

I am happy to have Leon’s news but so far Poldi and I have no such prospects. We don’t know anyone in New York who would sponsor us, and it is too soon to think of future plans. We want to revel, at least for this moment, in the pure joy of peace.

We are still discussing the letter when we hear shouting in the street and go to the window. We can see a crowd gathering near Goya’s office. Poldi says, “Let’s go and see what’s happening.”

Goya has been caught while frantically pulling papers from office cabinets, trying to destroy evidence of the injustices and cruelty committed under his command. He has rushed out into the street, a valise clutched tightly in his hand. A group of young Jewish men are waiting for him. With bare fists and the miserable Pau-Chia batons he forced them to carry, they start to release their hatred. “This is for my mother – you slapped her across the face and broke her teeth when she asked for a pass!” one of them shouts as his knuckles smash Goya’s disfigured face. He cries in pain as a red trickle drips from his lip.

As we watch the fight, I feel no compassion for the man who was our tormentor for so long. Like the others, I want revenge for the pain, the years of anguish, the fear and the death. Mama lies in the cemetery. Poldi’s parents are dead. Why should this miserable little man get away? If I had the courage I would join in the pummelling.

“This is for my sister, who begged for help and was beaten for it,” screams another, flailing his stick against Goya’s brittle bowed legs, making him crumple to the ground, his arms folded over his head, amid pleas for the mercy that he never offered to his victims.

“This is for my father who was denied medicine and died because of you!” shouts one more, tears of hatred and frustration wetting his face.

A mob has gathered, cheering on the beating, shouting in anger at the despised, squirming little man who caused so much misery for so long. Each time he is knocked down, he rises again, each time more shakily, and attempts a defiant military salute. He is still a Japanese soldier, trying to save face. On it goes until he is lying bloodied and bruised, but not dead. They have not killed him. That is not our way, even now, after the agony and torture and years of confinement. Even now we keep the commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” We turn our backs on him in disgust and revulsion. The “King of the Jews” has been overthrown.

“Enough,” I say to Poldi, “I can’t look at the blood any more. I want some quiet at last. Let’s go home.”

Sounds of revelling fill the narrow alleyways and broad boulevards of Shanghai. There are no longer divisions or segregated areas. There is only one city, gone crazy with a euphoric energy. Many are drinking and singing in inebriated glee, weaving joyously through the streets, arm in arm, bottles of whiskey and gin dangling from their hands. The American soldiers are a raucous bunch, carousing from bar to bar, and then like mischievous children, they dump the coolies and beggar children into the seats of the rickshaws and race excitedly up and down the roads, zigzagging through traffic, making a game of it all.

The Chinese are baffled and uncomfortable with this behaviour as it seems that the Americans are mocking them and the tedious work that has been their families’ livelihood for generations past. They consider it “losing face” but the Yanks are oblivious to the Oriental customs and sensibilities and carry on. We watch horrified, expecting a Chinese reaction to the blatant show of disrespect. After all these years, we have learned a few lessons about the reverence for tradition and honour. But there is no outcry, just some shocked faces and disapproving glances. After all, it is only the Americans having some good-natured fun and everyone is so grateful for the long-awaited freedom that these violations can be forgiven.

A new prosperity washes over Shanghai. Businesses are flourishing. The Americans have brought the precious commodity of U.S. dollars with them and are spending wildly, purchasing everything from hand-painted porcelain vases to fur coats that they will take back “Stateside.” They fill the restaurants, bars, and brothels and everyone is suddenly prosperous. An abundance of food fills the marketplaces with fresh produce. Rows of roasted red ducks and suckling pigs are hanging upside down in the Chinese shop windows or can be seen rotating on barbecue spits, fatty juices dripping, appealing aromas filling the air of the streets. Steamed dumplings are hawked on the sidewalks from huge boiling pots and bamboo steamer baskets. We have become accustomed to the smells of the local cooking that repelled us when we first arrived, and now the European refugees are even scooping rice and exotic delicacies into their mouths with chopsticks, in the Oriental style. A cosmopolitan banquet is available in Little Vienna, where Eastern cooking exists side by side with our familiar European foods. The Viennese cuisine in Hongkew these days is richer and finer than we have seen since we left Austria, and we all indulge. We eat and drink in a gluttonous orgy and vain attempt to fill the emptiness that characterized so many years.

It is the fall of 1945, and as we approach Rosh Hashanah, our New Year, the time we had previously feared we would be destroyed, we have reason to rejoice.

Poldi and I have started repairs on our room, trying once more to create a habitable space after the most recent destruction, but today we are visiting Stella and Walter’s home. The whole family is together again. There is a feeling of relaxed good spirits that has been missing for so long. For once there is food, real food, not the morsels and scraps that have sustained us through years of deprivation.

“I feel as though I’ve been dropped into a barrel of honey,” Poldi says, smiling and munching on a piece of fresh fruit. “There’s so much of everything now that the famine is over.”

“What should we do to celebrate?” Walter asks, eyes gleaming with anticipation.

“Something wonderful!” I say. “We must all take a holiday together now while we’re still so full of this feeling. We’ll go away with no care in the world and not talk about the future, only this precious moment.”

Everyone is inspired by my buoyant spirits. Then Willi says, beaming with delight at his idea, “Let’s go to Moka Shan, you know the place that everyone talks about, up high in the mountains, away from the heat of Shanghai, a paradise, they say. There are hotels up there with swimming pools and cool shady glades. It will be heaven.”

We all go together, even Dolu and Eva. Now, all the friction that our separation had caused is put aside. We are alive and longing for peace and harmony above anything else. In reckless abandon, we leave plans for future enterprises behind, longing just to escape from the chaos that we survived and the scorching heat that seems to come from the centre of the earth, seeping up through the cracks of the sidewalks.