Alexandra paid her entrance fee at the security checkpoint to the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum and stepped through the gate into a concrete courtyard. Immediately she was struck by a life-size bas-relief sculpture in bronze, so fluid it looked like it had been carved from mud. A bearded old man sat on a suitcase, reading a book, while beside him a tired woman clasped her headscarf to her chest. Standing on the other side was a young couple, the man solemnly holding an ornate set of Shabbat candlesticks and the woman standing behind him, a satchel over her arm and one hand gently touching the nape of her husband’s neck. In the lead was a man, tall, broad and proud, gazing directly ahead. On his shoulder was a young boy—no more than six or seven—staring ahead, his arms spread wide.

Goosebumps rose on Alexandra’s arms as she studied these anxious, weary refugees.

Behind these six figures was a sea of faces merging into one another, as if the sculptor had kneaded them together from clay.

These were the faces of the Holocaust. Fleeing. Seeking.

She gulped down smoggy air as tears started to prick her eyes. Somewhere in that sea of bodies belonged her Oma and Opa.

She’d come to Shanghai chasing people she didn’t even know existed, and yet here she was, face to face with the people who had loved and raised her.

The immensity of her grandparents’ journey immobilised her and she wished she’d agreed to let Zhang come with her. He’d offered to as he walked her to her apartment door last night, but she’d insisted this was a private matter and she needed to do it alone.

All the figures in the sculpture touched. Heads bent together, reassuring hands on shoulders, the gentle clasp of a child’s hand. None of them stood alone. Their strength was in their unity. Love.

Alexandra slid her hand beneath her coat to clasp her pendant, running her forefinger over the line of the lily, taking a deep breath to calm herself.

‘Can I help you?’

A woman with a smart pageboy bob and purple glasses stood beside her, eyebrows raised. Her nametag read: Al Cheng, Manager.

Alexandra started. ‘Oh, sorry, I just—’

‘It’s very moving, isn’t it?’ said the woman, nodding at the sculpture. ‘Very real.’

‘It is,’ Alexandra agreed. ‘Actually, maybe you can help me.’ She pulled her folder from her bag. ‘I’m trying to trace my mother.’ She told Ms Cheng the little she knew about her grandparents’ lives in Shanghai during the war and handed over her mother’s faded Australian adoption certificate, along with the crisp name card the woman at the Population and Family Planning Department had given her. ‘Ms Min Wang said to let you know I have already spoken with her.’

‘The first place to start would be this wall,’ Ms Cheng suggested. ‘We have over thirteen thousand refugees listed here. You say your grandmother’s maiden name was Bernfeld?’ She walked along a giant copper wall engraved with thousands of names until she reached B.

MARTA BERNFELD • OSKAR BERNFELD • ROMY BERNFELD

Alexandra’s goosebumps returned. This was her family, their names inscribed on a monument halfway between the city they’d left behind and the country they’d made their own. Shanghai remembered…

She reached out and traced the letters of her grandmother’s name then took a photo with her phone. Ms Cheng moved briskly down the wall, searching for her Opa’s name. Alexandra leaned in quickly and kissed ROMY BERNFELD. ‘I miss you, Oma,’ she whispered.

Ms Cheng returned. ‘I’m sorry, we have no Wilhelm Cohen on this wall. But our records are being updated all the time. I’ll just leave you to look through the museum if you like, while I do some searches. I’ll take this certificate too, if that’s okay?’ She bowed her head as she stepped backwards and then turned and walked into a nearby office.

Alexandra spent the next hour wandering from room to room, studying photos of refugees disembarking from European ocean liners onto docks filled with barrels. Rows of beds in Heime dormitories, ambulance trucks and soup kitchens. On and on the photos stretched: girls with sewing machines, handsome young men in football uniforms, Jewish identification cards, passports stamped with ugly red ‘J’s’, wedding photos with a Chinese groom and a Jewish bride, or vice versa. There were tiny leather suitcases, woollen hats and—the most precious commodity in Hongkew—leather shoes and oilcloth umbrellas.

Contracts to purchase tickets from the Lloyd Triestino shipping line Italien—Shanghai were mounted on the wall. The label underneath read: Documents like this were often used as proof of emigration to secure the release of Jews imprisoned after Kristallnacht.

Oma’s brother had been in Dachau. Had they tried to secure his release? Instead of questions being answered, each step revealed how little she knew of her grandparents’ past.

On the next wall was a photo of a nurse dressed in white, standing in front of an enormous window in a room full of empty hospital beds. Ms Cheng came to stand beside Alexandra.

‘This is Ward Road Hospital—you said Marta and Oskar worked there, but you didn’t mention that your grandmother also worked there as a trainee doctor.’

Alexandra stared at the woman, too stunned to speak.

‘I have these printouts for you. It’s a list of staff who worked at the hospital in Ward Road. The Imperial Japanese Army kept strict census forms in the ghetto. We also have a copy of your grandmother’s pass to leave the ghetto to attend her classes in medicine at Aurora University.’

Alexandra’s head was reeling as she studied the square pass stamped with Chinese or Japanese characters and the words FRENCHTOWN in faded letters, a scrawled signature at the bottom.

‘Thank you. That’s—I had no idea.’

‘Your grandmother sounds like an incredible woman.’

‘She is.’ Alexandra sighed, berating herself for knowing so little about the woman who’d raised her.

‘This shock, this sadness you are feeling, I see it often. People do things in war for two reasons: either out of duty and loyalty, or to survive. One is not better than the other. Both have equal merit. But often they are unable to talk about their experiences afterwards.’

Alexandra looked at the printouts in her hands and was too overcome with emotion to speak.

‘You are from Australia, you say? You are lucky. Your grandmother is lucky. But I think already she knows this. It is you who needs to understand.’

‘Did you find anything about my Opa—Wilhelm?’ said Alexandra, swallowing her sadness. Why wasn’t her Opa on the wall?

‘Only that he worked as a baker. But there is no record of his exit from Shanghai. Also, no death certificate. He’s not on the wall because we didn’t have his records at the time. New information about refugees is still being uncovered, though.’

‘I see. But what about the adoption certificate? My grandmother said my mother came with her from China.’

‘That may be so. But I’m sorry to tell you that this Australian adoption certification—’ she held up the certificate Alexandra had given her ‘—has no matching documents in China. But what I can tell you is that when Romy Bernfeld left Shanghai, she sailed to Hong Kong.’