Shanghai Passage

by Greg Patent

The author's account of his childhood in Shanghai during World War II and its aftermath

115 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1990

Reviews

[Nancy Rosen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a sanitized view of history, but of course, the narrator is a sheltered young boy, pre TV. What a contrast to Shanghai Legacy by Marion Cuba, which I finished reading a day or two ago. Both narrators are Jewish, but Cuba's parents escaped Germany whereas Patents parents were used to living in China, it was their home, and his mother and grandmother were Iraqi Jews. His grandfather had been a rabbi in Iraq, and his father was Russian. His parents communicated in English, their shared tongue. His mother and grandmother communicated in Arabic. His father and brothers and their wives communicated in Russian. At the end, they are more afraid of being stuck in Communist China than they were afraid of the Nazis, or at least as remembered by Patent who was only 10 (?) when they went to California. In Cuba's book we read in her mother's diary that people in Shanghai refused to believe what they heard about the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis, until they learned that what they thought was impossible, was true. I read Shanghai Passage, which was on my bookshelf, in preparation for book club discussion if Shanghai Passage.