That Shanghai emerged as an unlikely haven for German and Austrian Jewish refugees at the end of the 1930s has long been established in the historiography of the period. While other parts of the world imposed quotas and established other formidable barriers to desperate Jews, Shanghai opened its doors and enabled something on the order of 16,000 grateful central Europeans to find refuge there. Even after the commencement of the Pacific War, Japanese authorities tolerated the continued existence of this Jewish community, albeit in ghetto-like conditions.

The value of this volume lies not in any addition to our knowledge of the historical circumstances in which Shanghai's Jewish community was created, but rather in its capacity to convey to its readers the “lived experience” of those who made their way to Shanghai and who avoided the Holocaust because they did. It is, then, essentially an oral history project, indeed it is part of Palgrave's “Studies in Oral History” series. As an example of oral history, it fulfills its primary function well, that is, it conveys very effectively the oral testimonies of a group of former refugees, establishing compellingly what it meant for them and the course of their individual lives.

Steve Hochstadt's role is primarily an editorial one. He provides a general introduction to the volume as well as brief overviews of the chapters into which the testimony has been organized. That task is performed with an appropriately light hand—the context needs to be set clearly, but the objective historical record does not overwhelm the individual memories, nor is it called upon continuously to cross-check or validate them. The introduction also contains some reflections on the methodology, useful above all because the oral history approach adopted is quite a distinctive one. Hochstadt has recorded some 100 interviews with former Shanghai Jews, but for the sake of this oral history has focused on the experiences of just thirteen. Their interviews have been transcribed and edited into the form of narratives—the interviewer's questions that might have structured the original interview have been removed, so that the interviewees have now been transformed into what Hochstadt calls “narrators.” Their narratives are then incorporated as typically lengthy passages into a series of chapters, following their experiences before, during, and after Shanghai. The chapters dealing with life in Germany prior to exile and those devoted to the evolving circumstances in Shanghai are particularly valuable insights into history viewed from below. In contrast, the final sections dealing with lives established in the United States might have been more successfully distilled.

The reasoning behind the reduction to a relatively small number of stories is convincing. If history of this kind is to promote the reader's empathetic identification with the “narrators,” then it helps the reader if the number with whom to identify is small. That does, however, raise questions about the representativeness of the few whose stories are told. Inevitably there is an age bias—by the time the interviews were conducted, many of the Shanghai Jews had passed away. The ages represented then are from dates of birth in 1910 through 1930; all then were relatively young when forced into exile. They are all from German or Austrian Jewish backgrounds, though it is acknowledged that Jewish communities from Baghdad and Russia already existed in Shanghai, while a number of Polish Orthodox Jews found refuge there, too. Borrowing Wolfgang Benz's notion of the exile of the “little man,” the “narrators” hail from a variety of backgrounds, though most are solidly middle class. All of them found their way to the United States after the war—unwittingly, perhaps, the book reinforces the popular narrative of America providing ultimate sanctuary from the evils of the Old World. In reality, of course, there were many who made their way back to their homelands or built new lives elsewhere.

While it is understandable that the focus on a small group means that many stories are left untold, the contextual narrative provided by Hochstadt, while helpful and important, does not always avoid sweeping claims that are not easily sustained. To suggest, for example, that “individual citizens from Western democracies were actively discouraged from helping Jews escape the Nazis” (p. 15) probably needs more than the one example provided of an American journalist. Similarly, one case alone does not sustain the argument that in Australia “Jewish refugees had difficulties becoming integrated” (p. 197).

Nonetheless this book does add to our knowledge of an episode in the history of Jewish persecution during the Nazi period. It displays both the limitations and the many benefits to be gained from oral history, and it offers a model that others might well follow.