Jean Hoffmann Lewanda

From the 1840s until 1957 there were three distinct Jewish communities that lived in Shanghai, Tientsin and Harbin: Russian Jews fleeing pogroms and the Russian Revolution, Central European Jews fleeing the Holocaust, and the Baghdadi Jews, the earliest arrivals, whose wealth was critical to the survival of all three groups.

In November of 2021, Earnshaw Books released Witness to History – From Vienna to Shanghai: A Memoir of Escape, Survival and Resiliance. It was my honor and pleasure to serve as editor of a manuscript my father, Paul Hoffmann, had originally intended solely for family. It was my good fortune that Graham Earnshaw saw the value in sharing my father’s story with a much broader audience. Dad’s lifetime encompassed some of the most dramatic events in history. Despite all that has been written about the Holocaust, Jews fleeing to China was still an untold chapter for many. I continue to receive requests to speak to groups interested in knowing more about this community. Upon completion of Witness to History, I realized that I had another story to tell, my mother’s story. My mother was born in Harbin, China, the child of Russian emigrants. Mom was a storyteller and there was no manuscript to draw from.

On October 15, 2024, Earnshaw Books released Shalama – My 96 Seasons in China. This is a historical fiction account starting with the arrival of my grandparents in Harbin. The book is based on actual historical events and is told from the perspective of a child and then a young woman trying to make sense of a tumultuous and chaotic world.

In researching the events of my parents’ lives, I believe there is another story I would like to tell, an intimate look at the life of one of the prominent Baghdadi women living in Shanghai. Stay tuned!