On this day in 1943, the Shanghai Ghetto was established. For many thousands of Jews, this was a life-saving historical occurrence, if they could only make the journey to East Asia. Prior to 1943, Jews had poured into the international zones of Shanghai, China. These were delegations from Britain, the United States of America, France, the Republic of China, and Japan. This international division was out of economic interests in the area as a port city that was bustling after the Opium Wars. Jews had arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s from Baghdad; they were followed by Jews escaping Communist persecution during the Bolshevik Revolution. Shanghai did not require passports or visas for settlement, which allowed thousands of Jews to flee to China before Europe was completely occupied by the Nazis. Until 1938, travel consistently flowed from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia by train to Italy and then via ship to China. At the Evian Conference in 1938, many of the world’s larger powers stopped offering immigration programs, drastically affecting where Jews from Europe could go.World War II, now raging across the Pacific, led to the Japanese taking control of Shanghai and many other parts of China. While the Japanese were allied with Germany during World War II, their view of Jews was different than that of the Nazis. The Japanese viewed Jews as resources; this did not mean that they treated Jews kindly, but rather, that ethnic elimination was not on the agenda.On this day, the Japanese issued a formal Proclamation that stateless refugees had to settle in the Hongkou area of Shanghai, which primarily referred to the settlement of Jews across Shanghai. Prior to the United States entering World War II, Jews were aided in settling around the city in better areas by American programming. Hongkou had been one of the poorer, less thriving areas of all the delegations in the city. Wherever Jews had settled in the several years leading up to this day, they then had to move again into what became known as the ‘Shanghai Ghetto’, or Hongkou. It was not uncommon in this area to develop illnesses, from diseases such as typhoid, because of the amount of people enclosed in a tiny area. Water could not be consumed without boiling for purification; food was brought into the living camps for refugees, and curfews were enforced as this was all during wartime. Leaving Hongkou for any purpose was not permitted under Japanese rule if you were a person without citizenship (i.e. Jewish refugees). For about 20,000 Jews in Nazi Germany during the late 1930s, Shanghai was the only option for their survival. The end of the war was the turning point for some, as their families and friends could not escape Europe and faced extermination. In 1945, American and British troops liberated Japanese-controlled Shanghai and the Jews in the Shanghai Ghetto were given the resources and the ability to leave. Under President Truman, immigration for Jews fleeing post-Holocaust Europe was easier. While many Jews from the Shanghai Ghetto immigrated to the United States, many went to either the new State of Israel or to Australia.