Challenge: Jews escape to China

With a POD no earlier than 1933, how could substantial numbers (a million or more) of European Jews find safe haven in China during the war? I know there was a plan for settlement in Manchuria, but I'm looking for something not previously thought of.

For example could a deal have been worked out by the Evian Conference where by the US and UK would offer financial incentives for Chiang Kai-shek to provide host?
 
With a POD no earlier than 1933, how could substantial numbers (a million or more) of European Jews find safe haven in China during the war? I know there was a plan for settlement in Manchuria, but I'm looking for something not previously thought of.

For example could a deal have been worked out by the Evian Conference where by the US and UK would offer financial incentives for Chiang Kai-shek to provide host?

China was in the middle of a civil war and war with Japan, so you need to butterfly that away first
 
The Japanese rescued/protected a number of Jews (a few tens of thousands), and allegedly had plans to rescue many more ("Fugu plan"), but ultimately, if they rescue too many Jews, they piss the Nazis off hard core.
 
The Japanese rescued/protected a number of Jews (a few tens of thousands), and allegedly had plans to rescue many more ("Fugu plan"), but ultimately, if they rescue too many Jews, they piss the Nazis off hard core.

There were a large group of Jews who escaped to Shanghai in the 1930s and saw out the war there the japanese didn't ever touch them. Saw a movie about it couple of years ago.

There was a Japanese diplomat in one of the Baltic countries who gave japanese visas to jews in that country. Allowing these people to escape to Japan. Preventing the Nazis from getting a hold of them!

As there a posibility for expanding either of these two scearios for a larger scale espace from Europe?
 
The Japanese rescued/protected a number of Jews (a few tens of thousands), and allegedly had plans to rescue many more ("Fugu plan"), but ultimately, if they rescue too many Jews, they piss the Nazis off hard core.

Maybe, maybe not. Hitler just wanted them out of the Europe......
 
With a POD no earlier than 1933, how could substantial numbers (a million or more) of European Jews find safe haven in China during the war? I know there was a plan for settlement in Manchuria, but I'm looking for something not previously thought of.

For example could a deal have been worked out by the Evian Conference where by the US and UK would offer financial incentives for Chiang Kai-shek to provide host?

Butterflying away Japan and Germany's relations is rather easy, just have Hitler honor the forming Sino-German alliance. Suddenly Japan's expansionalism into China isn't so frowned upon by the west, Japan alienates Germany and would probably be glad to get thousands of modernly educated minds into their empire.
 
Butterflying away Japan and Germany's relations is rather easy, just have Hitler honor the forming Sino-German alliance. Suddenly Japan's expansionalism into China isn't so frowned upon by the west, Japan alienates Germany and would probably be glad to get thousands of modernly educated minds into their empire.

I used that as a base for a mini-TL, so I like this idea a lot, actually. :)
 
China was in the middle of a civil war and war with Japan, so you need to butterfly that away first
The civil war was fought in remote provinces and the war with Japan wouldn't start for several years. So there is a window of opportunity.

Even during the war, the Chinese general consul in Vienna, Ho Feng-shan issued thousands of visas to Austrian Jews. Some twenty thousand Jews fled to Shanghai. The reason China was the only safe harbour was largely due to the near paralyzed state of the government during the war made it impossible to turn away refugees even if they wanted to. However China as a refugee option was largely unknown to the Jews or their advocates in the West. This lack of information was a limiting factor as much as the sad state of war time China itself.

Perhaps if significant numbers of Jews migrated to China as skilled workers before the war, more would go later after Kristalnacht.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Feng-Shan
 
The civil war was fought in remote provinces and the war with Japan wouldn't start for several years. So there is a window of opportunity.

Even during the war, the Chinese general consul in Vienna, Ho Feng-shan issued thousands of visas to Austrian Jews. Some twenty thousand Jews fled to Shanghai. The reason China was the only safe harbour was largely due to the near paralyzed state of the government during the war made it impossible to turn away refugees even if they wanted to. However China as a refugee option was largely unknown to the Jews or their advocates in the West. This lack of information was a limiting factor as much as the sad state of war time China itself.

Perhaps if significant numbers of Jews migrated to China as skilled workers before the war, more would go later after Kristalnacht.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Feng-Shan

I missread I thought it just said 1930's, how do the Jews get from Germany to China in such large numbers; logisticaly that must be difficult.
 
I missread I thought it just said 1930's, how do the Jews get from Germany to China in such large numbers; logisticaly that must be difficult.
Basically two routes. One is by sea to Shanghai/Hong Kong. The other is by trans-Siberian railroad to Harbin, Manchuria.
 
you also need them to want to emigrate.
i remember hearing/reading that most of the Jews in Germany believed that it would all blowower, until it already was to late to leave
 

Hendryk

Banned
Even during the war, the Chinese general consul in Vienna, Ho Feng-shan issued thousands of visas to Austrian Jews. Some twenty thousand Jews fled to Shanghai. The reason China was the only safe harbour was largely due to the near paralyzed state of the government during the war made it impossible to turn away refugees even if they wanted to. However China as a refugee option was largely unknown to the Jews or their advocates in the West. This lack of information was a limiting factor as much as the sad state of war time China itself.
In the case of Shanghai specifically, it was also because the city was under such a complicated system of joint sovereignties that nobody really paid attention who was getting in and out. The British expected the French, the Japanese or the Chinese to do it; the French expected the British, the Japanese or the Chinese to do it; the Japanese didn't care; and the Chinese had more pressing priorities. So it was possible to enter the city even without a valid visa.

Another advantage of Shanghai as a destination was the presence of an old and well-connected Jewish community, which helped the refugees settle in as best it could.

From the Jewish Journal:

For German Jews trapped in a land that didn't want them and was about to kill millions of them, Shanghai offered a window of escape, but one that would surely close -- and soon. "Jewish men were being picked up and put into concentration camps," Janklowicz-Mann explained. "They were told you have 'X' amount of time to leave -- two weeks, a month -- if you can find a country that will take you. Outside, their wives and friends were struggling to get a passport, a visa, anything to help them get them out. But embassies were closing their doors all over, and countries, including the United States, were closing their borders."

And then suddenly a sliver of hope appeared.

"It started as a rumor in Vienna," Mann said. "'There's a place you can go where you don't need a visa. They have free entry.' It just spread like fire and whoever could went for it."

It wasn't that the Chinese deliberately set out to help the Jews of Europe, it was simply that among the warring colonial factions who ran Shanghai -- the French, the British, the Japanese -- no one wanted to control the passport department because no one wanted to take ultimate responsibility for the chaotic province. And in chaos lay an escape route for the Jews.
 
Moving millions (or even hundreds of thousands) of Jews from Europe is a logistical nightmare. It is widely argued that one of reasons that Stalin drew the line of ethnic deportations under half-million (sparing Estonians and Latvians) was absolutely prohibitive cost of moving half-million people just to secure some piece of land, it was cheaper to fight local guerillas in their woods and hills. I can certainly state that Trans-Siberian railway in 1930s didn't have spare capacity to move millions of humans across Siberia.
 
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