A new exhibition at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum opened this month, telling a story some might not have heard, as Noelle Walker reports for NBCDFW.
"It really is a story about emigration," Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum President and CEO Mary Pat Higgins said. "And it's a story about upstanders."
The special exhibit is called 'Hidden History: Recounting the Shanghai Jewish Story.'
"This exhibition is so interesting because it focuses on five families that found refuge in Shanghai," Higgins said. "We tend to focus Holocaust history on Europe and the Former Soviet Union, but Jews have been finding refuge in Shanghai since about the 1850s."
That 'Hidden History' is told through artifacts and photos. It covers Iraqi Jews fleeing in the 1850s, Russian Jews at the turn of that century, and European Jews in the time around World War II.
"If Shanghai had not been open to the Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, they likely would have been murdered," Higgins said. "They did face starvation and cruelty. It was different though from the concentration camps or ghettos in Europe where Jews were actively being deported to death camps and murdered for no reason."
The exhibition shows how Jewish refugees resettled in Shanghai and straddled two worlds.
"There's a beautiful prayer shawl that has the Star of David," Higgins pointed out. "But it also has plum blossoms, which signify perseverance and resilience in Chinese culture."
Some of the artifacts are written in Chinese, and some of the photos show dual cultures, like a woman cooking matzo balls in a traditional Chinese fire stove.
"This is a story of refugees finding a home in a foreign land and surviving because of that," Higgins said.
"So I think it's important history for us to all learn."
The special exhibition runs through Feb. 16, 2025, at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum.
