George's (1924-2003) story

[George's story, in his own words (unedited), written not long before he died in 2003. Photograph scanned from a colour print taken in the late 1980s.]

 

My parents and I lived in Vienna, Austria. On March 12, 1938 Nazi Germany occupied the independent Republic of Austria, claiming that the Austrians who were German-speaking people, were reunited with Germany. We did not object to the union of the two nations as such; but Germany was in the grip of a criminal government. My parents decided therefore to leave the country. We would have preferred to go to Britain or the United States, but that was impossible. One of the few places open to immigration at that time was Shanghai.

 

In December 1938 we went by train to Triest, and boarded the ship “Conte Rosso”, an Italian liner. In the first week of 1939 we arrived in Shanghai, China. I was just 15 years old; World War 2 was eight months away.

 

Shanghai was divided into 3 parts: 1) The International Settlement, run by Americans, British, French, Italians and Japanese; 2) The French Concession under sole French rule; and 3) The north-eastern suburb of Hongkew, which was under Japanese military occupation.

 

We lived in Hongkew; The Japanese ignored us and we ignored them. The border between Hongkew and the International Settlement was the Garden Bridge over the Soochow Creek. At one end of the bridge there was a Japanese sentry, at the other end, a Seaforth Highlander.

 

We begun to settle in comfortably when in September 1, 1939 the Second World War broke out. This war was fought in Europe and Africa and at sea. It had practically no effect in Shanghai.

 

The situation changed greatly when, on December 7, 1941 the Japanese made war on the Americans, British and Dutch. This war, fought in the Pacific, opened a new chapter in the history of Shanghai. As Japanese warships attacked U.S. and British warships in Shanghai, during the night, I actually heard the sound of guns. By next morning the Japanese had occupied the whole of Shanghai.

 

The Allied citizens were interned; as our German passports had expired we were “stateless”. The Japanese confined us to part of Hongkew. I lost a good job I had with an Aid Agency. Employment was very hard to get and the food supplies ran low.

 

There was no fighting in Shanghai for several years. Early in 1945 the American air force started to bomb selected targets in Shanghai. One day they hit a radio transmitter and several houses nearby collapsed. There were some Europeans killed. I helped to carry one of the corpses to a Red Cross camp. By then, the food situation was grim. I remember eating mouldy bread, made from maize flour and full of weevils. It is amazing what one can eat when there is no choice.

 

At that stage I was resigned to the prospect of not surviving the war. If I escaped starvation and the American bombing, there was always the chance that the Japanese military, knowing that they were losing the war, would lose all control and kill all Europeans.

 

When the United States dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, the Emperor of Japan convinced the military to surrender. The war in the Pacific ended on August 15, 1945, more than three months after the European war ended. Soon after that, American and Chinese troops arrived in Shanghai, disarmed the Japanese soldiers and sent them back to Japan.

 

We could then have returned to Austria, but the country was damaged by the war and occupied by armies of Britain, America, France and Russia. It was possible for us to go to Australia, yet it took years to get the necessary visas. We arrived in Sydney, Australia in March 1949.

 

We thank God that we survived the War, we are sad that so many people died.

 

George

Done