Exodus: The Shanghai Jews

by Kate McAll

As Jews tried to escape Nazi Germany in the 1930s, they faced unthinkable roadblocks in obtaining exit visas. And while they were denied entry in one country after another, a bureaucratic oddity enabled some of them to flee to an unlikely destination: Shanghai, China.

In this LATW original commission, playwright Kate McAll uses the survivors’ own words to create a narrative of people starting their lives over in a completely new land.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Drama, China

1 pages, Audiobook

First published October 12, 2023

Reviews

[Zachary Littrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting story, with charming and meaningful voices...but missing a little bit of meat. Covers these disparate Jewish lives high-tailing it out of Germany/Austria while they could and making do in China with their new neighbors, and then Japanese overseers.

I'd personally like though to hear more:
* What was it like making friends in China?
* What was it like being unable to speak the language?
* What was the feeling of the Chinese towards their new Jewish neighbors and their unique rituals?
* Was there any survivor's guilt? They got out and survived in a foreign nation while others weren't so lucky?

But still, it's an interesting teaser to a chunk of WWII history, and, all things considered, the rare mostly positive story.

[CarolB · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only an hour and 26 minutes long, this theater piece brought to light a population I never heard about: 20,000 European Jews who escaped nazi oppression and were welcomed by Shanghai. As Jewish-owned shops in Germany and Austria were being closed, property was being confiscated, rights were being limited or denied, some Jews saw the writing on the wall and got out. They had to get past many administrative obstacles, many uncooperative administrators, to get visas and passports. Arriving after sailing on one of the many "slow boats to China" they found that China was happy to see them, and some of them got jobs in Chinese companies. They patched together new lives, stayed for 8 or 10 years until the war was over, then headed out to wherever they could get accepted.

All of this is told by individuals in a script created from taped interviews with many ex-Shanghainese Jews. The performers (from the Los Angeles Theater Workshop) were wonderful. Hearing about the lives during this Exodus was remarkable.

[Lawanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

An important part of history but the format left me wanting much more. Audiobook by L A Theater Works

[Roxanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in an oral history format with various fictional characters being "interviewed" about their escape from Nazi Germany, I found this audio-play extremely generic and fails to fulfil the biggest promise of the title - Jews who escaped to Shanghai and what that was like.

The first 45 minutes was a very generic narrative about the experiences Jews had in escaping Nazi Germany during WWII - the fear of being stopped at the border and how they abandoned most of what they owned applied to all Jews, regardless of where the Jews' intended destination were. So many "escape from Nazi Germany" stories have been written, both in factual history and dramatised on the big (and small) screen that it was surprisingly the author decides to spend the bulk of the audio-play on it, rather than use the time to illustrate how different the experience had been for those who found themselves on the opposite side of the world.

The rest of the audio-play didn't fulfil the tagline promise either. If I didn't know the audio-play was meant to be about Shanghai Jews, I could have listened to the remainder of it thinking that it was a generic immigrant arriving in a new land during war time story.

The fact that most of the content was so bland did make me wonder how much of the story was based on research, rather than completely made up and therefore hardly reflective of the Jewish experience in Shanghai. So I'll be off to read some actual history now to find out.

[Diana Keto-Lambert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always like hearing personal stories that occur during historical events, and I had no idea that Shanghai opened its doors for almost all refugees, which was pretty rad. I kinda wished I knew more about the actual ins and outs of daily life and what assimilation was like for those who moved there. They touched upon it, but I kinda wished for more. Perhaps I’ll find another book that’s more in depth. 3 ⭐️

[Jim Woehrle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting topic, but not much of a story. The audio play does not do enough to differentiate the characters.