Peter Damm

That same year they began planning to leave Germany and escape increasing persecution. They traveled from Berlin through the Brenner Pass to Trieste, Italy. From there they went by ship via the Suez Canal and eventually arrived in Shanghai, China.  Shanghai, then under Japanese control, was the only place in the world that didn’t require a visa for entry.  In Shanghai, summer temperatures soared to 110 degrees with almost unbearable humidity day and night, mosquitos and flying cockroaches.  Arriving in Shanghai on June 6, 1939, the family moved to the French concession, where Peter’s father was hired as a physician for a missionary school run by American and British missionaries for Chinese students.  This stint ended when the missionaries were interned as prisoners.  At that time, Peter and his family were forced to move into the Hongkew Ghetto District– a 1.5 square mile area that housed about 20,000 Jewish refugees and destitute Chinese families. Peter shared one small room with his father, mother, and sister.

“The living conditions in Shanghai were very sad. We had no electricity… No cooling. No refrigeration. No hot water and of course no lights…The diseases were rampant. So cleanliness was utmost.”

His father practiced medicine and made house calls from the one room in which they lived while Peter attended the Shanghai Jewish Youth Association School. There, Peter continued to study German, English, Hebrew, French, Japanese, Chinese, arithmetic, and geography during the U.S. occupation of Japan. Peter’s father died in August 1944 before the entire family could emigrate.

“I decided to speak about my trip and my life in Shanghai because not much is known about the twenty-thousand Jews that lived in Shanghai because they had to escape.”

Peter, his mother, and sister received visas to come to the United States in 1947, eight years after arriving in Shanghai. Today Peter lives with his wife Esther in Seattle. He has four sons, one daughter, two grandchildren and two great grandsons.