Israel's first Chinese Jew takes long road to promised land

The child of one of the last remaining Jews in Shanghai, Sara Imas had to wait 42 years to fulfil her father's dream of migrating to Israel and becoming its first Chinese immigrant. But it was not the promised land she had dreamed of and she has returned to Shanghai as the representative of a diamond firm. Ms Imas' story is one of surviving personal and political persecution and the tenacity of the Jewish state in helping its citizens abroad, including those in xenophobic communist states. Ms Imas was born in 1950, the daughter of Leiwi Imas, a Polish Jew, and a woman from Jiangsu province. Leiwi Imas was one of more than 20,000 Jews who escaped from Europe and found refuge in Shanghai during the second world war. Formerly a businessman on the borders of Germany and Poland, he opened shops in Shanghai selling carpets and wine. After 1945, most of the Jews left Shanghai for Israel, the US, Australia and other countries. After the communist takeover in 1949, Imas went to work in the customs department. He received approval to go to Israel in 1956 but, then aged 71, he suffered from high blood pressure and could not travel. So he lived with his daughter in a home for Jewish people in Fuxing Road, in the heart of the old French concession. The community lived on pensions from the central government and from the Jewish Agency, which sent shipments of kosher food from Hong Kong. The agency continued to send Ms Imas money for 40 years. Imas spoke to his daughter in a mixture of his native Yiddish, English and Hebrew and she learned Putonghua and the dialects of Shanghai, Ningbo and northern Jiangsu, where her mother came from. In 1962, just before he died, Imas told his daughter: 'Take your chance, have babies and go back to Israel.' It would take her 30 years to realise his dream. Ms Imas continued to live in the home and was the last Jewish person there in 1967, when Red Guards took over the building. As she clung to the banister, they seized her by the hair and legs and forced her to leave. They cut her hair, stole her watch, bicycle and other possessions and burned the rest. They confiscated the money she received from the Jewish Agency and ended her education. She went to live with a foster mother in northern Jiangsu, before finding a job in 1971 as a manual worker at the Shanghai Copper Factory. She obtained a letter of invitation from the Israeli government and an air ticket and took them to the Public Security Bureau. But the police told her that Mao Zedong had banned travel to three places in the world - Taiwan, South Korea and Israel - and so she could not leave. In 1972, the head of the Shanghai Jewish Association - her one patron - died. In 1973, she was arrested and held for 11 months in a detention centre in southern Shanghai. She was then sent to a farm in Anhui province for two years of reform through labour. She was released and rehabilitated only after Mao's death and the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. 'When I returned to Shanghai, I had been 'reformed',' she said. 'I did not think any more about going to Israel. Losing your freedom makes you very timid. In prison, I had written a letter saying that I would never go to Israel.' Ms Imas returned to work at the copper factory, married, and had a son she named Yihua (which means Israel-China). In 1985, the police told her that she was free to go to whichever country she wished. She flew to Tokyo, the nearest Israeli embassy, which provided her with a visa and a ticket. 'That night I could not sleep. If I went, it meant that I could not see my son, perhaps for five years.' She returned to Shanghai. In 1992, China and Israel established diplomatic relations and she finally left for Israel. By then, she had had two more children, a boy and a girl. 'My heart flew like the plane. I did not fear any more that I would be arrested. Only those who have lived through political campaigns will know what this means.' She became the first Jewish immigrant from China. But her new life began inauspiciously. At the airport bank, she handed over US$120 - and received in shekels the equivalent of US$21. Unable to speak English or Hebrew, she lived and worked in Chinese restaurants for a year until her three children came and she was assigned an apartment. They went to school and learnt Hebrew. Ms Imas spent her spare time learning English and Hebrew. 'The Russians there have a big community helping new arrivals, so do the Americans, but no one helped me. The only Chinese Jews were six families from Lanzhou , originally [Muslim] people, who worked on a kibbutz and became converted with the help of money they paid to the religious authorities. I was very disappointed with Israel and do not want to live there. Everyone wants to be prime minister.' Her children adapted better to their new country and still live there. Ms Imas travelled back to China several times as an interpreter for the Israeli government and in 2002 accepted an offer from the Lustig Brothers Diamond Company to be their chief representative in China. 'But business is bad because 95 per cent of the diamonds on sale in China are smuggled,' she said. 'Dealing in legal diamonds means duties in excess of 30 per cent. Chinese companies that sell diamonds purchase them abroad and not through representatives of companies here.' Now, she spends much of her time as a visitor to hospitals, talking to old people. Ms Imas' remarkable story may have an even more improbable ending. If business does not improve by the end of this year, she may apply to emigrate to another country - Germany. 'The government has a policy to attract Jews for immigration. It will give me an application.'