page_title: Shanghai Ghetto
section_title: Creation of the Shanghai Ghetto
hierarchical_section_title: Shanghai Ghetto / Creation of the Shanghai Ghetto
caption_attribution_description: English: 1942 Polish Association ID issued to a Jewish man living inside the Ghetto.
context_page_description: The Shanghai Ghetto, formally known as the Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees, was an area of approximately one square mile in the Hongkew district of Japanese-occupied Shanghai. The area included the community around the Ohel Moshe Synagogue but about 23,000 of the city's Jewish refugees were restricted or relocated to the area from 1941 to 1945 by the Proclamation Concerning Restriction of Residence and Business of Stateless Refugees. It was one of the poorest and most crowded areas of the city. Local Jewish families and American Jewish charities aided them with shelter, food, and clothing. The Japanese authorities increasingly stepped up restrictions, but the ghetto was not walled, and the local Chinese residents, whose living conditions were often as bad, did not leave.
context_section_description: On February 18, 1943, the occupying Japanese authorities declared a "Designated Area for Stateless Refugees" and ordered those who arrived after 1937 to move their residences and businesses within it by May 18, three months later. The stateless refugees needed permission from the Japanese to dispose of their property; others needed permission to move into the ghetto. About 18,000 Jews were forced to relocate to a 3/4 square mile area of Shanghai's Hongkou district, where many lived in group homes called "Heime" or "Little Vienna".
  The English version of the order read:
  The designated area is bordered on the west by the line connecting Chaoufoong, Muirhead, and Dent Roads; on the east by Yangtzepoo Creek; on the south by the line connecting East Seward, Muirhead, and Wayside Roads; and on the North by the boundary of the International Settlement.
  While this area was not walled or surrounded with barbed wire, it was patrolled and a curfew enforced in its precincts. Food was rationed, and everyone needed passes to enter or leave the ghetto.
  According to Dr. David Kranzler,
  Thus, about half of the approximately 16,000 refugees, who had overcome great obstacles and had found a means of livelihood and residence outside the 'designated area' were forced to leave their homes and businesses for a second time and to relocate into a crowded, squalid area of less than one square mile with its own population of an estimated 100,000 Chinese and 8,000 refugees.
  Although a few temporary passes were issued to work and to 16 students of St. Francis Xavier College, outside the ghetto, these were granted arbitrarily and were severely curtailed after the first year. But the fact that the Chinese who lived within the Hongkou ghetto did not leave meant the Jews were not isolated. Nevertheless, economic conditions worsened; psychological adjustment to ghettoization was difficult; the winter of 1943 was severe and hunger was widespread.
  The US air raids on Shanghai began in 1944. There were no bomb shelters in Hongkou because the water table was close to the surface.  The most devastating raid started on July 17, 1945, and was the first attack that hit Hongkou. Thirty-eight refugees and hundreds of Chinese were killed in the 17 July raid.
  The bombings by the US 7th Air Force continued daily until early August, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and the Japanese government surrendered shortly thereafter.Refugees in the ghetto, improvised their own shelters, with one family surviving the  bombing under a bed with a second mattress on top, mounted on two desks.  
  Some Jews of the Shanghai ghetto took part in the resistance movement. They participated in an underground network to obtain and circulate information and were involved in some minor sabotage and in providing assistance to downed Allied aircrews.
caption: 1942 Polish Association ID issued to a Jewish man living inside the Ghetto.
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