Book Description
Against the backdrop of looming world war and Hitler's "Final Solution," 11-year-old Ursula Bacon and her family made the terrifying 8,000-mile voyage to Shanghai with its promise of freedom. Instead they found overcrowded ghettos filled with desperately poor Chinese and Japanese. Amid the city's abysmal conditions and its prostitutes, drug dealers, and rats, Ursula discovered a city of exotic, eccentric, and exciting humanity. Years later, when the fate of friends and family left behind in Germany became known and documented, the hard life endured by those in the Shanghai ghetto seemed to pale in comparison. As a result, the "Shanghai Jews" have been all but lost in history. Ursula's eight-year struggle is a story to be shared and remembered. As she watches her best friend die from fever, befriends a Buddhist monk, learns the lessons of street life, and aids an American airman, her remarkable memoir will resonate with readers long after the last page is read.
Shanghai Diary: A Young Girl's Journey from Hitler's Hate to War-Torn China FROM OUR EDITORS
The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
With the abundance of Holocaust literature in print, it's difficult to weigh one Holocaust memoir against another. While each life history has merit, the memoirs we select for the Discover program are those which bring something fresh to the genre. Ursula Bacon's memoir is a welcome addition, her story a much-needed side of a little known world -- the Shanghai ghetto.
By the late 1930s, Hitler had begun to roll over the European Jews he sought to extinguish, and many began to flee. Sadly, their choices for refuge were limited. North and South America refused to take them in, as did Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and many European nations. Bacon was one of nearly 20,000 Jewish refugees who left for Shanghai. Her riveting tale begins the night the Gestapo comes for her father, and follows her small family on their voyage to China.
Greeted at the Shanghai waterfront with Hitler's flag, Bacon's family has good reason to doubt that the city will provide a truly safe harbor for them. And while Bacon's early impressions of Shanghai are revolting -- beggars covered in sores, children eliminating waste in the street -- over time she is charmed by the exotic city that will be her home for seven years, until the bombs of the Japanese come crashing down.
Bacon unravels her tale with skill, recreating dialogue and scenes with a filmic precision, and includes photos from her time in exile. (Holiday 2004 Selection)
FROM THE PUBLISHER
In 1939, the Third Reich was closing its iron grip around the lives of Germany's Jews. Most Western nations, not willing to involve themselves in volatile European politics, had shut their doors to Jewish immigrants. Tens of thousands of Middle-European refugees, fleeing Hitler's brutal regime, set their hopes for freedom on Shanghai - the only open port available. sEleven-year-old Ursula Bacon was one such refugee, narrowly escaping with her parents from the clutches of the SS. After traveling 8,000 miles from their lifelong home and witnessing the arrest of fellow passengers, they arrived in Shanghai only to discover that the long arm of Nazi influence had extended into China. They made an abrupt transition from a life of privilege to one of malnourished poverty, living in a district teeming with disease and noxious waste. During the eight years that passed before the family's dream of emigrating to America was realized, they relied on determination, ingenuity, the help of honest friends, and the calming presence of an England-born Buddhist monk to persevere. In this fascinating memoir, Ursula recounts her struggles in that overcrowded and dubious refuge of Shanghai - from the ensuing Japanese occupation to an intense moment of self-defense; from targeted Allied air attacks to assisting the rescue of a downed American crew. Fifty years later, Ursula is ready to tell her story.
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