The Zachariases in Shanghai
This restaurant was an inspired cooperation between three families, the Zachariases, the Oppenheims, and the Daltrops, none of whom had any experience in the culinary business. The women cooked (some of them learning for the first time), and the men waited tables. The families rented out space to boarders, and burned the furniture left by the original owners for heat. The Wayside Diele closed within a few months.
These food ration coupons from Shanghai entitled refuges to basic necessities including flour, sugar, and coal briquettes.
This was a menu from a Passover seder held in the spring of 1947 in Shanghai. The invitation came from Tikvah, a community organization.
This passport, stamped with a red J for “Jewish,” belonged to Hildegard Zacharias, and included a photo of her daughter, Karin Zacharias. The Nazis required all Jewish women to take the middle name Sara.
Another page of the passport.
This is from the cigar shop owned by Leo Zacharias. Leo was a lawyer in Germany, but once in Shanghai, he, like many other Jewish refugees, found work in areas he was unfamiliar with. He established a cigar shop, a lending library, and, with two other families, a short-lived restaurant called the Wayside Diele.
Another view of the cigar box.
The poems in this collection were written and published by the German Jewish refugees in Shanghai. Many small collections like it, as well as pamphlets of humor and in some cases Shanghai in jokes, were published by and circulated among the refugees.
Another poem.