ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the portrayal of the Nazi Holocaust in Chinese public culture today, focusing on the case of the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum (SJRM). It explains how contemporary global interest in the trauma suffered by Jews at the hands of the Nazi regime has prompted China’s Communist authorities to seek ways of drawing links between Jewish and Chinese suffering—notably China’s traumatic invasion by Japan. But Shanghai’s wartime role as a refuge for Jewish refugees can also be used to portray Chinese as benevolent saviours of victims of European barbarism—at the cost of greatly over-simplifying a complex historical situation. Promotion of Shanghai’s Jewish refugee heritage has further involved Sino-Japanese competition for UNESCO recognition, as each country seeks to trumpet its role in saving Jews from Nazi terror during the Second World War. Taking account of this context and recent shifts in official historiography, the chapter examines the evolution of the SJRM exhibition. It concludes that the Chinese state’s interest in the Holocaust as heritage has remained overwhelmingly instrumental, focused on enhancing Shanghai’s civic profile and burnishing China’s international image.
