8 February – 9 March 2002

Jews of Shanghai was an exhibition of photographs by Horst Eisfelder, charting his experience as a refugee in Shanghai after the Second World War. Jews are not commonly associated with China, yet by the mid-1930s, a flourishing Jewish community had emerged in the port city of Shanghai, and by 1942 the Jewish community had numbered over 18,000. Horst Eisfelder was thirteen years old when he arrived in Shanghai in 1938 with his family as Jewish refugees from Germany. The young Eisfelder took the photographs in this exhibition over a nine-year period. Now based in Melbourne, Eisfelder’s experience if diaspora and migration and its candid documentation adds to our understanding of Australia’s diverse social history.

This exhibition was part of the Sydney Jewish Museum‘s Crossroads: Shanghai and the Jews of China project.