Shanghai, the Jewish sanctuary

The story of how the city embraced waves of refugees fleeing Europe is being researched by the Israeli consulate, reports Chloe Lai

The computer sitting on a hardwood desk on the third floor of the Ohel Moshe Synagogue looks like a desktop PC you would see in any home or office. The information it holds, however, is exceptional. The dossier sheds light on an important chapter of Jewish history - how thousands of Jews escaped Nazi genocide in Europe during the second world war and found refuge in Shanghai.

The dossier includes the refugees' names, origins, occupations, details on how they left Europe, where the survivors are now and how to contact them.

The Israeli consulate, which is behind the documentation of this valuable part of history, hopes the dossier will become an ever-richer tapestry - eventually holding information on all 20,000 of the Jews who took refuge in Shanghai.

Uri Gutman, Shanghai's Israeli consul general, expects it to become a collective memory for the new Jewish community in Shanghai, which consists of 100 companies and 3,000 people, of whom 600 are Israelis.

'The story of Jews in Shanghai is a unique one,' Mr Gutman says. 'They used to have a unique and vibrant community with five schools, theatres and hospitals. They had a rich cultural and community life, but it all disappeared when the Jews left at the end of the 1940s. Now there is no collective memory for the new community.'

The Jewish influence in Shanghai dates back to the period when it became a treaty port in 1842. The first wave of immigration, which lasted from the second half of the 19th century until the first world war, began with a group of 700 refugees from Baghdad, who arrived via India led by the Sassoon family.