Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Eric Rosenow - August 5, 1982

Bombing of Shanghai Ghetto

...now the Israelis they didn't do any worse than the American people or the English people did. When they bombed our ghetto, they were--they knew--the American people know definitely that there were 20,000 Jewish people living in this ghetto. They know that the ammunition arsenal was put right in this uh, vicinity. Of course, there were civilian casualties. A lot of civilian--a lot of Jewish people died when the planes came down in Shanghai.

Straight?

Absolutely. Our friends who lived upstairs, Mr. and Mrs. Marcus, her father died, when the American people bombed Shanghai.

Do you know roughly how many Jews died?

I don't know, no.

Okay. All right. Again, this may not apply, but you never know...

Mm-hm.

Uh, we do address the issue of resistance and the partisan movement um, was there any kind of movement towards uprising in the Shanghai ghetto?

No.

No.

No.

Never any committees meeting...

No.

...and talking about, what's happening to us, we've got to do something?

No, the, the Japanese people put us--they restrain us over there, said we couldn't move out but we could go after our business. We were free to do anything what we want, but this was about it. We didn't know uh, what was going on outside. We're not allowed to hear uh, short wave radio. This you could uh, if they would detect us, they would shoot you. The Japanese people put a lot of people what did something wrong or they took them away from the house and put them in jail, they call it ??? and they were, they were not dying there. I didn't hear anybody--but they punished them.

Tortured?

Tortured, yes, but nobody was dying.

Did anybody wind up staying behind that you know of? They were kept in jail after you left?

I don't remember. I don't, I don't, I don't believe so, I don't believe so because the, the, the uh, jail was liberated also when the war was out. It was uh, occupied by the Japanese. As soon as the war was out, the Japanese people lift their hands and that's it, uh...


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