One Past, Two Histories

Exhibiting the Shanghai Jewish Refugees in China and Austria in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Many museums around the World launched exhibitions on the topic of Shanghai Jewish refugees in the past few years, putting the history of 20,000 Jews who fled to Shanghai 1933–1941 on display. Though connected in topic, the exhibitions do not present a unified historical account. This paper puts into a comparative perspective two Shanghai Jewish Refugees history exhibitions that opened in 2020: the temporary exhibit titled “Little Vienna in Shanghai” by the Jewish Museum in Vienna and the reworked permanent exhibition of the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum in Shanghai. The two exhibits present diametrically different versions of the experience of the European Jewry in the Shanghai exile, the former addressing the challenges that awaited the refugees in the city, the latter romanticising the situation and claiming utopian harmony between the Chinese and the Jews. While analysing how each exhibition curates the history of Jewish exile in Shanghai, the paper points out not only the obvious differences between their narratives but the common overlaps in shared absences and lack of historical contextualisation of the complex reality of wartime Shanghai. Ultimately, the comparison serves as a reflection that the much discussed "globalisation of memory" does not necessarily entail pluralisation or an increased inclusion of perspectives; it can equally produce parallel, partial narratives shaped by national and/or institutional imperatives.