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Dateline: Shanghai – A story of survival told in Willimantic

Eric Kisch was just two-and-a-half years old in January of 1940, when he and his mother fled Austria and sailed to Shanghai to meet his father. The Kisches were not alone. From the mid-1930s to 1941, when its gates were closed, the city of Shanghai became a last resort for thousands of Jews fleeing the Nazi terror. Coming by boat from Europe, by train through Russia, Siberia, and Manchuria, and even from Japan, 20,000 European refugees found shelter in Shanghai, and thus were able to survive the Holocaust.

The Kisches lived in Shanghai until July 1946, when the family immigrated to Australia, settling in Melbourne.

On Sunday, Nov. 2, at 11 a.m., Eric Kisch will recount his remarkable story of survival in Shanghai at Temple B’nai Israel in Willimantic. Using family documents and photographs as illustrations, Kisch illuminates a dramatic chapter of Jewish history: a time of despair for adults, and an exciting, exhilarating experience for those who lived it as children and adolescents.

A retired market researcher, consultant and teacher, Kisch has told the remarkable story of his family’s survival in Shanghai throughout the U.S. and Australia. A resident of the United States since 1960, he returned to Shanghai in 2000 for the first time since he lived there as a child. For more than a decade he has researched the history of the Jews in Shanghai and his family’s experiences there during World War II. In addition to his research on the Jews of Shanghai, Kisch produces and hosts a weekly classical music program.

Temple B’nai Israel is located at 345 Jackson Street, Willimantic. For more information, contact, office@templebnaiisrael.org; sheilabamdur@gmail.com or ssnmslr@att.net.

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