"ב"ה the 16th day of Adar 2, 1943, Shanghai" A letter from Shanghai in the midst of the Holocaust, by the geniuses Rabbi Avraham Kaplinsky, Av Beit Din of Seinisk, and Rabbi Shmuel David Larshavchik. In their letter, the geniuses address Rabbi Levin, Gaba'd Tensin for thanks about the amount of money sent to them in Shanghai which benefited seventy-seven families and more, including the Amshinov Rebbe family and other rabbis, and describe the difficult situation: "... our terrible situation ... The price goes up from hour to hour, and the state of health collapses and loosens from the stress and hunger that prevails in our country in accordance with such a terrible situation is really Pikuach Nefesh in the full sense of the word, " And seek urgent assistance to facilitate the exile of Polish and Lithuanian refugees. Bellow are the signatures of the above rabbis.
As in Europe, so in Shanghai the Jewish refugees lived in constant fear under the rule of collaborators with the Nazis, and the fear was that what was happening in occupied Europe would also happen in China under Japanese occupation. Their fear increased when the Japanese government decided to concentrate all the refugees who came to the city in the ghetto. Despite the Nazis' demand, the Japanese did not hand over the Jews, But the refugees suffered from abject poverty and constant hunger, and the support money sent to them in tortuous ways was what actually sustained the exiles at that time. Rabbi Meir Ashkenazi, rabbi of Shanghai from 1926-1949, said that when more than 1,000 Jewish refugees from Poland arrived in Shanghai, more than half of them was rabbis and yeshiva students, and under the influence of the Mir, Leibowitz and "Chachmei lublin" yeshivas, the face of the Jewish community in Shanghai changed completely. And all this could not have been done without the support funds that came from some countries in complete secrecy, which enabled the existence of both physical and spiritual life.
[1] Official sheet of stationery of the 'Union of Rabbis and Kollels of Exiles from Poland and Lithuania in Shanghai'. 28x22 cm. Missing tear on the left without damaging text. general condition good.
