How Jewish refugees found a wartime home in Shanghai

Asst. Prof. Rachel DeWoskin has visited Shanghai every summer for nearly a decade, walking along streets that more than 18,000 Jewish refugees once called home. Spanning roughly a square mile, those blocks were where they established schools and businesses, rebuilding their lives in one of the few cities that accepted World War II refugees without visas. DeWoskin's years of research culminated in the January publication of Someday We Will Fly , her fictionalized account of a young Jewish girl fleeing war-torn Poland. Described as "a beautifully nuanced exploration of culture and people," the book is the fifth from DeWoskin-an award-winning novelist and assistant professor of practice in the arts who has taught at the University of Chicago since 2014. In writing her novel, DeWoskin also relied in part on the family possessions of UChicago staff psychiatrist Jacqueline Pardo, whose German mother Karin Pardo (née Zacharias) lived in Shanghai as a child. A selection of those objects and photographs are displayed on the third floor of Regenstein Library. That exhibit is sponsored by the Joyce Z. and Jacob Greenberg Center for Jewish Studies, which is also supporting two events : a March 13 conversation between DeWoskin and former Secretary of the Treasury W. Michael Blumenthal followed by a concert of wartime music by Civitas Ensemble, and a May 14 symposium on the legacy of the Shanghai Jews. DeWoskin spoke recently about her writing process, and what people can learn from this overlooked aspect of World War II history. A display you saw in 2011 at the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum planted the seeds for Someday We Will Fly . What was it that stuck with you?