Chinese Food for Thought

by Jesse Mandell

Shanghai Ghetto
Directed and Produced by Dana Janklowicz-Mann and Amir Mann
Not Rated, 95 Minutes

“See this movie if you have a soul,” Andre Saris of the New York Observer remarked. After seeing this movie, I am pleased to heartily reaffirm his declaration.

The full-length documentary Shanghai Ghetto touches on an almost forgotten corner of the Jewish experience in World War II. In the late 1930s, Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany found most ports of call closed to them, including those of Britain, Canada and the United States. However, there was one real destination for escape: the city of Shanghai, China, which had been fractured into several internationally monitored demilitarized zones, and, with a Japanese military invasion imminent, passport control virtually collapsed. For the right price, Jews could book passage on Japanese steamers. Upon arriving, the runaways congregated into one of Shanghai’s most impoverished, disease-ridden neighborhoods, forming the signature Jewish ghetto.

This film, produced by the intrepid Amir Mann and Dana Janklowicz-Mann, recounts the ghetto’s history by highlighting the riveting narratives of several former inhabitants and outlining their struggle for survival in a new and alien environment. Compared to millions of their brethren though, the Shanghai refugees were quite fortunate. They left a world of turmoil and despair for a land free of the Third Reich’s virulent anti-Semitism.

Their new lives, however, were hardly trouble-free. The ghetto was cramped and disgusting. The narrow streets were replete with refuse and lined with tenements, often housing several families in a single room. Sanitation was nearly non-existent. In spite of these rancid conditions, the film illustrates how the ghetto residents overcame great odds to establish schools and imbue their children with a Jewish education. Through extensive interviews with former residents and gripping footage of the city itself, the film provides a poignant portrait of the Jewish daily life, which was, by-and-large, oblivious to the horrors they fled.

Mann and Janklowicz-Mann shot the film’s footage with a digital camera they smuggled into China at great personal risk. Under Chinese law, they could have been deported or possibly imprisoned. Incredibly, as the camera examines the city’s configuration, we are privy to a ghetto that has been left unchanged for almost half a century.

What’s more, accompanying the plucky filmmakers is Janklowicz-Mann’s father, Harold Janklowicz, who, together with his mother, arrived in Shanghai at the young age of eight and spent the duration of the war there. During his residency, Harold attended a Jewish day school, while his mother worked hard to provide him with a home and food. In his visit to Shanghai, Harold’s first since the end of the war, his poignant descriptions of those trying times buttress the film’s realistic perspective, while concurrently transfixing the viewers.

With its rich history, haunting photography, and compelling storytelling, it comes as no surprise that Shanghai Ghetto won the Audience Choice Award for Best Documentary at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. The film is neither exploitive nor does it ask the audience to be overly sympathetic to the Jews’ pitiful plight in the ghetto. It portrays these historical events humbly, inviting the audience to introspect and in effect ask, how this could happen. Shanghai Ghetto is a timeless testament that demonstrates the indomitable power of the Jewish spirit and shows that no matter how much the Jews’ enemies try to destroy them, the Jewish people will always live on.

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