(Author: Hyman Jocum, Vol. 77, #1, Summer 2022)
When in May 1939 the British parliament in Westminster published the White Paper on Palestine with its severe restrictions on Jewish immigration it effectively scuttled the Balfour Declaration. From then onwards, aliyah to the Holy Land only seemed possible through illegal means. The 1939 White Paper effectively kept European Jewry trapped in a continent whose countries would soon be conquered one by one by the most ruthless armies that the world had ever seen. There was still a possibility of Jews fleeing Germany if they could depart penniless and if any country was prepared to take them in.
Between the outbreak of war in September 1939 and November 1940, when Hitler and Stalin were still allies, Jews who were still permitted to leave German-occupied territory often opted to take the world’s longest rail journey from Berlin to Vladivostok on the Russian Pacific coast. From Vladivostok they could take a boat ride to Kobe in Japan and from there take another boat to Shanghai on the China coast. Though this city had been under Japanese occupation since 1937, the Japanese respected the international status of the port city and Jews were granted permission to settle in the American zone of Shanghai. This continued until the day of the US’s entry into the war in early December 1941, when the Jewish population was placed in a different residential zone of the city. In all, some 25 000 European Jews escaped the Nazis by their flight to Shanghai, a number far greater than that of Jewish refugees admitted into all four British Dominions (South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) combined.
When in February 1937 the South African parliament passed the Aliens Act, further Jewish immigration into the Union was effectively barred (although the following year Premier Hertzog did relent to the extent of agreeing to admit the elderly parents of refugees who had settled in the country between 1933 and December 1938). There was one other loophole for Jews on the run and that was those with visas for Shanghai were permitted to stop over in Lourenço Marques, capital of the Portuguese colony of Mozambique on the south-east African coast. This was subject to the condition that such refugees did not seek employment or enter commerce on Portuguese soil.
After the fall to the Nazis of the Atlantic seaboard, extending as far as the Franco-Spanish border town of St. Jean de Luz in the shadow of the Pyrenees, it was extremely difficult to get visas to cross Spanish soil to enable them to reach Lisbon, about the only port on the Atlantic coast not yet under German occupation. However, at least 4000 Jews managed to reach Portuguese soil. Once in Lisbon, representatives of the Joint Distribution Committee with its offices in New York and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society with its offices in London were there to advise them which destinations to head for. The US was prepared to admit West European-born Jews while the UK was prepared to admit couples with adult children. Many Jews who were not eligible for entry to either those countries opted to go to the Chinese consul in Lisbon and apply for visas to Shanghai. Though occupied by the Japanese the Chinese consul still issued visas.
In March 1941 a Portuguese passenger ship, the SS Joao Bello left Lisbon for the Portuguese colony of Macao on the south China coast. The voyage included stops at Madeira, the Portuguese African ports as well as Indian west coastal cities of Goa and Damoa. Few of the passengers intended sailing all the way to Macao. The majority intended to debark at one of the Portuguese African ports. As a neutral ship, to avoid being attacked by the German navy, all lights on board had to be switched on throughout the hours of darkness. A young girl who sailed with her parents on that ship later recalled that as they rounded the Cape of Good Hope all the ports were blacked out.
The Joao Bello docked in Lourenço Marques on a sunny day in May 1941. Senor Judin of the Jewish Board of Deputies was at the docks to receive the Jewish passengers. He had the unenviable task of finding accommodation for all 100 of them. In this he was assisted by Senor Luis Rygor, president of the Lourenço Marques shul.
The majority of the refugees were awaiting allowances from the JDC in New York. Once the JDC had notified those fortunate enough to receive allowances that they would soon be taken care of, many of them chose to move into the Club Hotel, a neat fin-de-siècle building with a wooded exterior prefabricated in Lisbon in 1896. The downstairs stoep of the hotel was furnished with a lengthy table as was the upstairs balcony. An al fresco breakfast of coffee and a roll was included in the hotel’s daily tariff of 24 escudos (about 60 cents per day).
Many of the refugees had bought return tickets from Lisbon to one of the far flung Portuguese colonies but as they had travelled only one way and just part of the distance at that, they hastened to one of the Lourenco Marques shipping offices to claim their rightful refunds. However large or small, these had to suffice until the handouts from the JDC began arriving.
Luiz Rygor had two adult children staying at his house – son Stanley and daughter Gertie. Both travelled to Johannesburg on alternate months to collect English language books and boxes of old clothing from the SA Jewish Board of Deputies. This they did in the greatest secrecy as it was common knowledge that the telephone lines of the SAJBD were being tapped by the then government.
Those of the refugees who could read and speak English were in great demand as whenever a mailship from Southampton arrived. English language periodicals and newspapers were delivered to the popular bookshop of Ernest Bayly, Luiz Rygor’s father-in-law. Only by reading the latest London newspapers, seven weeks old by the time they arrived in LM could the refugees know what was going on in the war-devastated world.
In April 1939, a German ship arrived in Beira with 300 Jewish refugees with visas alleged to have been forged by the consulates in Germany. The Southern Rhodesia authorities refused to recognise the visas and the group was sent back to Beira from the Rhodesian border town of Umtali. J.M. Barnett, a wholesale Beira butcher, had exclusively borne the burden of contact with this group. He wired Rabbi Konvisser of Harare (then Salisbury), who duly contacted Sir John Maybin, Governor of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Maybin felt that the small European population of the colony needed enlargement and 297 visas were issued to this group of refugees. Most of the latter settled in the new capital of Lusaka or the old capital of Livingstone while the rest established themselves in a dozen copper mining towns from Abercorn to Roan Antelope. Three of the group that had arrived in Beira were admitted to Kenya, which had already allowed in over 600 Jewish refugees.
Unlike the inhabitants of the South African seaports, after dark LM residents could stroll along avenues gaily illuminated by multi-coloured electric lights and be enticed by the aroma of Brazilian coffee into numerous coffee houses where they could listen to loud fado music. Aside from Portuguese-speaking Europeans, there were settlers from Macao and Goa, who usually preferred their own style of tea or coffee houses, but all got on well together.
Although Portugal remained neutral throughout the war there were occasional incidents which served as reminders to the refugees that a war was still in progress. The community was delighted to hear that a German battle cruiser, the Atlantis, had docked in Delagoa Bay to unload a cargo of passengers that it had picked up from ships it had sunk in the Indian Ocean. Amongst those the Atlantis offloaded was a complete Jewish family of husband, wife and small child. They had come not from Europe but from Java. Their surname was Hollander and it was in Holland that they settled once the war was over.
About a year later the next naval incident occurred. In November 1942 a British ship H.M.S. Nova Scotia carrying 765 Italian prisoners-of-war to Durban as well as 134 South African soldiers back home on leave was torpedoed by a German submarine off Cape St Lucia. A Portuguese ship picked up 200 Italian soldiers as well as 43 South African survivors off the Natal coast. The Italians were allowed to settle in Mozambique after first being given Portuguese citizenship. Many of the Jewish refugees were now optimistic that they too would be granted Portuguese citizenship, but Salazar was prepared to grant only sanctuary, not nationality.
After General Erwin Rommel’s capture of Tobruk in June 1942 the South African government granted visas to men of military age and their families. This did a bit to ease the refugee crisis.
The Rosh Hashanah of 1942 was the bleakest New Year of the war thus far. The German army was close to Alexandria near the Nile delta and Britain had transferred many of its ships from Alexandria to Haifa. The LM shul had never before been so crowded. Many of the congregants followed the services by standing outside the walls of the shul.
A favourite meeting place of the refugees was the municipal zoo, which had large coffee tables at its al fresco café. Ten customers could be accommodated around one table and a coffee pot for all ten customers cost only two escudos. Prices in 1939 were low but as the refugees had no source of income they had to live very frugally.
The Holocaust altered forever the lives of innumerable survivors. One interesting case is that of a talented little Polish girl who arrived in LM in 1941 after having literally traveled around the globe. In 1940, she had been spirited out of the Warsaw Ghetto with the help of the International Red Cross and assisted in travelling to Moscow, during the early stages of the war when Germany, Russia and Japan were all allies. From Moscow she traveled by train to the Russian Pacific port of Vladivostok which it reaches after a 12 day train ride from the Russian capital. From here she sailed for the Japanese port of Kobe from where she was trans-shipped to Shanghai, which had been under Japanese occupation since 1937. There she was re-united with her father, who put her on a boat sailing for the South China Portuguese colony of Macao. From there she boarded a Portuguese ship bound for Lourenco Marques, where on arrival she was re-united with her mother who obtained permission for her to attend school in South Africa. When the Red Army occupied Shanghai in January 1949, the entire family was re-united in Israel. Annette Gutman (as she then was) went on to marry Leo (Ariye) Dulczin, who had spent the Hitler years in Mexico and who later became Minister of Housing in Premier Golda Meir’s cabinet. Former refugees who spent the Hitler years in LM will certainly remember this talented little girl, who could accompany herself on the violin or guitar with a selection of Polish or Portuguese songs.
Those refugees who braved the opulent lounges of the Polana hotel may remember Malcolm Muggeridge. A diplomatic spy, Muggeridge’s dinner table was planted halfway between those of the Italian and German Ambassadors to the Union, both of whom fled on to Portuguese soil when their countries went to war with South Africa. Whether or not he ever heard anything of vital interest to his country during his five year stay is uncertain.
Artur Shilling, a refugee from Vienna, arrived in Lourenco Marques in 1938 and stayed there for the next twenty years. He claimed that once he arrived there he never felt homesick for Vienna again. The bright lights, the fado music from the coffee shops, the endless stretch of white sandy beaches, the beautiful architecture and the low prices of basic foods made it a paradise for refugees. It was above all a European city. Mozambique was one of the few neutral countries that willingly admitted penniless Jewish refugees, and Lourenco Marques was a haven for them during some of the darkest years in human history.
Hyman Jocum, a retired educationalist, has published widely on historical and educational topics. He is a former chairman of the Johannesburg branch of the South African Friends of the Jewish Maritime League.
