Supervisors:
Kolleen Guy, Associate Professor of History
Jay Winter, Charles J. Still Professor of History, Yale University
Project Description
Shanghai was a safe haven for those who fled from holocaust, as it was one of the only places in the world that did not require visas for entry. During the time period of 1940-1941, approximately 25, 000 Jews fled to Shanghai, 18, 000 of whom resided in the “designated area”, known as the Shanghai Ghetto, from 1943. Degrees of Freedom: German and Austrian Refugees in China, Singapore, and Australia, 1939-45 aims to examine the lives of the Jewish refugees before, during, and after Shanghai during World War Two. The project examines multiple facets of refugee life in Shanghai, looking at individual stories to build a larger web of survival containing statelessness, loss, and the layers of empathy the refugee community had built among themselves, as well as the Chinese. The project is a part of a larger comparative historical analysis of the life of the refugees in Asia during World War Two and beyond.
Student Researchers
Shuhuai Zhang is a rising junior at Duke Kunshan University. He majors in Global China Study-History. He is mainly responsible for collecting Chinese sources and studying the experience of refugees by tracing several individual trajectories.
Nino Nadirashvili is a sophomore student at Duke Kunshan University. She is from Tbilisi, Georgia and will potentially major in Political Economy with a track in Political Science. Her task in the research project is to track the journey of the Mir Yeshiva, a group of three hundred students who fled to Shanghai from Lithuania, becoming the only yeshiva to have survived the holocaust intact.
Jingcheng Wu is a rising junior at Duke Kunshan University. He majors in Data Science. In this project he is mainly responsible for establishing and maintaining the project website, creating an interactive timeline of refugees’ activities, and assisting with other technical problems.
Leiyuan Tian is a rising Junior at Duke Kunshan University. She majors in Media and Art with a track in Art History. She is mainly responsible for researching primary materials and interpreting artworks in this project.
Meixuan Wang is a rising junior at Duke Kunshan University. She majors in Media and Arts (history track). She is mainly responsible for researching on Jewish refugee’s cultural life in Shanghai and writing a profile for Peter Max in this project.
Emily Gonzales is a rising junior at Duke Kunshan University. She is from San Diego, California and is currently majoring in Cultures and Movements with a track in Cultural Anthropology. Her interests include gender and sexuality studies, transnational migration, and methods of self-expression.
Giulia de Cristofaro is a rising sophomore at Duke Kunshan University. She is from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and intends to major in Political Economy. Mainly, she is responsible for expanding the research to include South America and finding refugees who established themselves in Brazil or Argentina after leaving the Shanghai Ghetto.
Susan Lin is a rising sophomore at Duke Kunshan University. She intends on majoring in Political Economy with a concentration in economics. She currently works on amassing archival material for the team to parse through and is working on a comparative analysis of the individual experiences of two young refugees that had lived in Shanghai.
Research Poster
