A brave Jew remembers a city of kindness
When 90-year-old Suzanne Sambor arrived in Shanghai, all the vague memories in her mind became clear. She could almost see the buildings and the street views of old Shanghai in the 1930s, smell the fragrant gardenia and hear the noise of vendors.
"I'm finally home!" she said excitedly, to both her companions and the city, the only shelter for her family when they fled from their motherland after Hitler arrived in Vienna.
She returned to bring back old memories and look for old friends.
Sambor was born into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1929. Her father was a jeweler and her mother worked in a bank.
"I didn’t have any brothers or sisters because of the Depression. We couldn’t afford more children. Dad was worried about how he could support the family if he had more than one child. Before Hitler came he earned a little bit more."
She went to school and everything seemed peaceful until Hitler came. On March 12, 1938, the day of the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, Hitler arrived in Vienna.
“We were very friendly with our neighbors and when Hitler came we were very surprised how people changed from one thing to the other,” said Sambor.
As soon as Hitler came, people were divided, even young children. Sambor said she had a Jewish friend and her cousin Ditta had a non-Jewish one, who were always with them. “Then when Hitler came to Vienna, overnight it changed. We said to the little girl: ‘how are you?’ And she said: ‘go away you dirty Jew’.
“We couldn’t understand how it is overnight people changed.”
She could still remember the Nazi soldiers dragging and hurting people. "We saw a lot of people being hurt and kicked and persecuted in the streets. And we were stoned. Mom used to have to pick me up. We tried to live our normal lives but the Germans ran after us, we were still chased. But what could we do?”
Kristallnacht, crystal night, on November 9-10, 1938, was every Jew's nightmare. Also known as the night of broken glass, Jewish homes, businesses, synagogues and schools were ransacked and damaged, littering the streets with broken glass. Thousands of Jewish men were sent to the Dachau concentration camp.
Sambor's mother came running to pick her up and take her home. She said they were lucky because the SS only took men and would do nothing to them. But her father, who hid in the toilet at her grandparents' place, was found by the SS and taken to Dachau.
Then the family made a plan to save her father from the camp. “At that time they only sent men, not women. And when you could show that you were leaving the country, they would let you out. We tried to get my dad out of Dachau. The Jewish Association, they helped with the fare."
Her mother and two aunts went to Dachau to try to convince the guards to release her dad. When they could prove that they genuinely had the tickets to leave, he was released.
"By the time we left Vienna, the only country that had left their doors open to us was China. Nowhere else would take any more refugees."
Sambor and her two cousins' families left Vienna in 1939 and went by rail to Trieste, Italy and then by ship to China. "We were going to Shanghai."
There were three ships at Trieste going to Shanghai — Conte Verde (Green); Conte Biancamano (White); and Conte Rosso (Red). Conte Rosso was the boat they were on.
During the war it served the Trieste-Bombay-Shanghai route and become one of the major escape routes for Austrian and German Jews fleeing Hitler. But this route was closed when Italy joined the war in 1940.
“It took six weeks," Sambor said. "We stopped at different ports, I don’t remember them all. But we stopped in Singapore. Before the war, my late aunt and uncle were in Singapore. They were on the ship before us."
Her aunt and uncle lived for a while in Singapore.Then when the war started, Singapore deported them to Australia, to Tatura (Victoria), where a few internment camps were established.
"When we arrived in Shanghai, the Jewish Committee met us and gave us food and put us in different camps. The Jewish Committee people were kind.They allocated rooms to the families," said Sambor. “We were four families per room.The rooms had bunk beds. Sheets and blankets were hung to divide the room for privacy.
“For me, I loved Shanghai. The camp we lived in had so many lovely young people and the friendship was unbelievable." There was no jealousy, the children were happy to play with each other. "We used to play hopscotch and we used to sew an old piece of rag with buttons to throw up and catch.
“The friendship we had, you don’t see anywhere."
Because they knew English, American soldiers sometimes came to the camp. "They were not like the soldiers of the day, they were kind. Sometimes before the war, they came and took us up onto the ship. They invited the whole family either for a dinner or for a movie."
Helen Pentifallo, a friend of Sambor's, said her experiences in Shanghai were more like a young girl's adventure. When they took her touring around the city, the faded memories and scenes sleeping in the old woman's mind came to life, though everything had changed in Shanghai in the past eight decades.
"Compared with Vienna, Shanghai is still more like her home. It plays such a role in her mind," Pentifallo told Shanghai Daily. “Every day she mentioned something about Shanghai. Throughout her day — one small part of the day, something in her life during Shanghai will be mentioned, always.
“She said it was an adventure and she loved every minute of it. She made friends and they were doing things together. It was fun,” Pentifallo said. “I think being a child, they didn’t have the knowledge of what was happening in the big picture. They were only involved in what was happening right there. She does remember the air raids and having to run to the prison and hide, flee. But she still loved everything.”
Now her biggest wish is to find the old friends who shared the same memories of Shanghai.
In 1941, Japan took control of Shanghai. Later the Jews were isolated in an area of around one square mile in Hongkou District. The Jewish ghetto was closely guarded by Japanese soldiers.
"My parents were allowed to work while they were in the Shanghai camp. Before the outbreak of war, my dad was selling ladies’ powder cases outside the camp. But when war was declared, it was much harder to leave the camp. Refugees were forbidden to leave the Jewish area without a permit. It was a guarded community and there was a curfew."
The permits were issued by Koah Goya, a senior Japanese officer overseeing the Jews in Shanghai. Sambor pictured him as a "bad man." If anyone was found outside the area without a permit, they would be severely punished.
“Dad needed a permit to go to work. In the morning, people would queue to request a permit to leave the area. Dad made money in Shanghai selling powder cases. Mum knitted gloves to sell. They needed money to buy food and boiled water."
But despite a few “bad guys” there were many others who warmed her heart, such as Mr Kadoorie, the main reason for her telling her story to Shanghai Daily.
“They are a wonderful family, really wonderful. They gave us free schooling,” said Sambor. “You don’t find any people better than the Kadoories. They have hearts of gold.”
She and Ditta went to the public school while cousin George went to the private school, which was further away. It didn’t make any real difference and they learned the same things at school. There were separate classes for different age groups, but boys and girls were in class in together.
“We went to school holding our nose because it was very smelly. We had to walk past the coolies (Chinese laborers) who picked up the toilet cans and changed them for empty ones, but I don’t think they were sterilized.”
She went to school in Shanghai until she was 14 and then left school to help her parents. She worked with a woman to finish sewing and needlework. The money earned would help with food and housekeeping.
“We also had bombing. When the European war was finished, they took themselves (the conflict) to Asia. We had no shelter, we were told the jail was safe, but we didn’t know why the prisoners of war were screaming because there was a machine gun.”
"When there was bombing the sirens would go off. There were no bomb shelters, so people would run to the prison because it was solidly built. We did not know why the prisoners were always very frightened when planes were dropping bombs. Then after the war, we found out that there was a big machine gun on top of the prison, which would be a target for enemy bombers; that was why the prisoners were always screaming during bombing. We survived, but with hearing loss due to the bombs and sirens.
“Shanghai was my dream. People who came from other places were wealthy, they didn’t like it, but my camp, there was a lot of young people, and I was never bored and there was always somebody to play with. Always something to do.
"We lived in the camp at Shanghai for seven and a half years. We loved it. Some didn’t, but we did.”
After the war, when Sambor's family left Shanghai, George’s family went to America.
"I went with my mom and dad to Australia. My family chose to go to Australia because my aunt and uncle who had been in Singapore were already living here.
"On our way to Australia, we were stopped in Hong Kong because the British needed their ship to bring soldiers back to Australia. All refugees had to leave the ship. Our trip to Australia was canceled and we had to stay in Hong Kong."
The Kadoorie family, who were successful entrepreneurs and established many businesses in Asia before the war, helped them again.
“Mr Kadoorie gave us food and accommodation for four and a half months, and some people for longer at the Peninsula Hotel." Sambor later learned that Kadoorie had to sign a contract with the Hong Kong government ensuring that he would care for the refugee community until a ship was found to take them to Australia. He provided accommodation and food, three meals a day, to all the Jewish refugees in his care.
During her visit this time, Sambor received a certificate from the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum naming her as a brave Jew who once lived in Shanghai. She hopes one day that she can meet anyone who knew her in Shanghai to recollect their shared memories.