"Mourning for the Jews" Chinese Intellectuals and the Discourse on National Socialist Anti-Semitism (1933-1949)

Based on the full-text database for periodicals of the Republican period (1911-1949), the article focuses primarily on the discourse history of Chinese intellectuals on Nazi anti-Semitism in the context of the dynamic relations between China, Germany and Japan in the 1930s and 1940s. Three theses are to be pursued here: 1) In the face of the Europe-wide Nazi persecution of Jews, the majority of Chinese adopted a humanitarian standpoint and felt sympathy for the Jews, although some individuals - in support of Japanese and Imperial German war and Jewish policies - attempted to spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in the Japanese occupation zone. 2.) The Chinese debate on the Jewish question was predominantly present in the Shanghai press in 1938 and 1939, when Central European Jews found refuge in this Far Eastern metropolis. Their fate was analyzed intensively, especially from a socio-historical point of view, whereby a general consensus emerged among the majority of intellectuals about two main motives of National Socialist anti-Semitism: the Jewish diaspora and envy of the supposedly immeasurable Jewish wealth. 3.) In the Sino-Japanese war situation, most Chinese saw the destitute Jewish refugees as victims of the political and social circumstances just as much as themselves, which is why the intellectuals placed their full trust in the Jewish resistance, such as Zionism, and expected Jewish survival. The Chinese people's hope for survival was unmistakably more related to their own country and people, who had also suffered greatly in the anti-fascist world war.