During the years between 1939 to 1941, several thousand Jewish refugees passed through Kobe. The most famous of them were probably the three hundred teachers and students from the Mir Yeshiva in Poland. With Japan's help, it became the only yeshiva to fully survived the Holocaust. By December of 1941, when the war broke out with the United States, only a few Jews actually remained in Kobe. The rest had moved on to third countries, which mainly meant settling in the Japanese controlled Shanghai.

Shanghai already had a relatively large Jewish population of 6,000 before the war. These Jews included the affluent Sassoon's and the Kadoori's of Baghdadi origin, and later the Russian Jews who fled the pogroms. During World War II, then, refugees from all over migrated toShanghai, and the Jewish population grew to 18,000. Compared to their fellow Jews in Europe, the Jews in the Far East were treated very well. A refugee camp for Jews, know as "Hongkew Ghetto," was established in Shanghai in 1943 and most of the Jewish refugees moved there, but these Jews were allowed to leave the ghetto during the day to work, and they were not prosecuted. The city literally saved thousands of Jews from death.

Memorial to Jews of Shanghai

Old Jewish Neighborhood in Hongkew District of Shanghai

More Housing in Hongkew

Building Used as Hospital by Refugees

During the actual war, the synagogue in Kobe was burned down in an air raid by the United States. The Sephardic congregation was forced to share space with the Ashkenazi minyan, which welcomed them.