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“Kharbinger” of Trouble. Anti-German Protest and Power Relations in a Manchurian City 1933

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Abstract

This paper examines the anti-German protest of the Jewish community in the Manchurian city of Harbin under the Manchukuo government. It presents an answer to the question of how the reactions to global events are shaped by local particularities. In this case, the ascendance of Hitler and his National Socialists is the global event, and the Jewish responses to it in Harbin were unique because of the local power relations between different ethnic groups and the Japanese rulers. These interrelations are demonstrated by two peculiarities. Firstly, the Japanese administration in Harbin censored and even fabricated information about events inside the Jewish community. Secondly, despite being able to suppress Jewish protests and having an interest in doing so, the Japanese officials refrained, because the Jews’ perceived economic hegemony led them to opt for a moderate response. Despite being in a position of formal superiority, the Japanese administration was restrained in its ability to shape its multi-ethnic society, and the groups inside that society therefore had room to act.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    There are very few publications about the anti-German boycott, and they mainly focus on American Jews. Moshe Gottlieb, “The Anti–Nazi Boycott Movement in the American Jewish Community, 1933–1941” (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1967); Richard Hawkings, “Hitler’s Bitterest Foe: Samuel Untermeyer and the Boycott of Nazi Germany, 1933–1938,” American Jewish History 93 (2007): 21–50.

  2. 2.

    For an overview of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria see: Yamamuro Shin’ichi, and Joshua A. Fogel, Manchuria under Japanese Dominion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Luise Young, Japan’s Total Empire Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

  3. 3.

    Among other things, the Japanese arrested, tortured, and killed political opponents. For an extensive list of tools, see: Dan Ben-Canaan, The Kaspe File. A Case Study of Harbin as an Intersection of Cultural and Ethnical Communities in Conflict 1932–1945 (Harbin: Heilongjiang University, School of Western Studies, 2008), 29–30.

  4. 4.

    David Wolff, “Evrei Manchzhurii: Kharbin, 1903–1914 gg.,” Ab Imperio 4 (2003): 239–70; Ziva Shickman-Bowmann, “The Construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway and the Origin of the Harbin Jewish Community, 1898–1931,” in The Jews of China, vol. 1: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Jonathan Goldstein (New York: M.E. Sharpe /East Gate, 1999), 187–99; Victoria Romanova, “Russkiiskie Evrei v Kharbine,” Diaspory 1(1999): 115–42.

  5. 5.

    HEDO, the first Jewish organisation in Harbin, was founded in 1903 to fulfill the religious needs of the community and to register births, marriages, and deaths. The institution was reorganised, and its functions expanded far beyond religious matters in 1917 after the Kerensky government lifted all religiously–based restrictions. Boris Bresler, “Harbin’s Jewish Community, 1898–1958: Politics, Prosperity, and Adversity,” in The Jews of China, ed. Goldstein 200–15, here 202–3.

  6. 6.

    In the conflict between secular and orthodox Jews that evolved around the reorganisation of HEDO in 1917, the orthodox minority in Harbin suffered a severe defeat. After that, it seems that they did not play any important role within HEDO and the Jewish Community as a whole. Bresler, “Harbin’s Jewish Community,” 203.

  7. 7.

    Ibid., 201.

  8. 8.

    For example, see in Kharbinskoe Vremia: “Posledniia Sobytia v Germanii. Korichnevye Batal’ony i Evrei” [The latest events in Germany. The brown battalion and the Jews], Kharbinskoe Vremia 83, 2 April 1933, 2; “Anti–evreiskii prizyv Gitlera. Sovieshchanie Gitlera s ministrom propagandy Gebbel’som” [Anti–Jewish appeal by Hitler. A meeting of Hitler with the propaganda minister Goebbels], Kharbinskoe Vremia 79, 29 March 1933, 5; “Voina Gitlerovtsev s Evreiami” [The war of Hitler’s supporters with the Jews], Kharbinskoe Vremia 103, 20 April 1933, 3.

  9. 9.

    See for example Evreskaia Zhizn’ 12, 11 April 1933; 13, 23 April 1933; 14, 5 May 1933; 19, 6 June 1933.

  10. 10.

    “Kharbinskaia Nedelia” [The Week in Harbin], Evreskaia Zhizn’ 12, 11 April 1933, 25.

  11. 11.

    “Kharbinskaia Nedelia,” Evreskaia Zhizn’ 13, 23 April 1933, 26.

  12. 12.

    “Protest kharbinskoi evreiskoi obshchiny” [Protest of the Jewish Community], Kharbinskoe Vremia 106, 23 April, 1933, 10.

  13. 13.

    “Evreistvo i germaniia. Zlobodnevnaia anketa sredi evreiskikh obshchestvennykh Kharbina” [Jewry and Germany: Current poll among the representatives of Jewish community in Harbin], Kharbinskoe Vremia 105, 22 April 1933,7.

  14. 14.

    “Kharbinskie evrei protestuiut” [The Jews of Harbin Protest], Harbin Herald 99, 22 April 1933, 4.

  15. 15.

    “Evreistvo i germaniia,” Kharbinskoe Vremia 105, 22 April 1933, 7.

  16. 16.

    “Germanskii ‘Natsionalizm’ i Evrei” [German National Socialism and the Jews], Kharbinskoe Vremia 106, 23 April 1933, 2. The first issue of Kharbinskoe Vremia was printed short before the Japanese occupation of Harbin in September 1931. The newspaper was published until September 1945 by the Japanese consulate in Harbin and therefore firmly under Japanese control.

  17. 17.

    Avraham Iosifovich Kaufman was born in 1886 in a Ukrainian village. During his time as a student, Kaufman became an active supporter of the Zionist movement in Russia. In 1909, after his return from Switzerland where he studied medicine, Kaufman worked as a doctor in Perm. He moved to Harbin in 1912, where he soon became one of the most important leaders of the Jewish community and of the Zionist movement in China. After the Soviet invasion of Harbin, Kaufman was arrested and spent 11 years in a labour camp in the Soviet Union before he was released in 1956. Kaufman emigrated in 1961to Israel, where he died 10 years later.

  18. 18.

    “Evreistvo i germaniia,” Kharbinskoe Vremia 105, 22 April 1933, 7.

  19. 19.

    Letter to the editor, Harbin Herald 6, 27 April 1933, 4.

  20. 20.

    For the Russian Fascists in Harbin, see Heinz-Dietrich Löwe’s essay in this book; also: John Stephan, The Russian Fascists. Tragedy and Farce in Exile, 1925–1945 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978); Aleksandr Vasil’evich Okorokov, Fashizm i Russkaia Emigratsiia: (1920–1945 gg.), (Moscow: Rusaki, 2002); Erwin Oberländer, “All–Russian–Fascist–Party,” Journal of Contemporary History 1 (1966): 158–73. Russian Fascism in Exile. A Historical and Phenomenological Perspective on Transnational Fascism, Fascism. Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies (forthcoming September 2013).

  21. 21.

    Stephan, Russian Fascists, 68–9.

  22. 22.

    Amleto Vespa, Secret Agent of Japan. A Handbook to Japanese Imperialism (London: Gollancz, 1938), 50.

  23. 23.

    “Germanskii ‘Natsionalizm’ i Evrei,” Kharbinskoe Vremia 106, 23 April, 1933, 2.

  24. 24.

    The Lytton Report was commissioned by the League of Nations to investigate Japan’s role in the so-called Mukden incident, which served as the pretext for the invasion of Manchuria. The report concluded that the new state of Manchukuo could not exist without the patronage of the Japanese army and had only limited Chinese support. As a result, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations. Sandra Wilson, The Manchurian crisis and Japanese society, 1931–1933 (London: Routledge, 2002).

  25. 25.

    See: Astrid Freyeisen, Shanghai und die Politik des Dritten Reiches (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2000); Donald McKale, “The Nazi Party in the Far East 1931–1945,” Journal of Contemporary History 12 (1977): 291–311.

  26. 26.

    This rule also implied that Aryans without a German passport were excluded from the club. Mitteilungsblatt der NSDAP 45/5, February 1936, 77.

  27. 27.

    Mitteilungs- und Verordnungsblatt der Landesgruppe Ostasien der NSDAP 9/1, February 1934, 26.

  28. 28.

    Kharbinskoe Vremia and other newspapers said nothing about how Germans in Harbin reacted to the boycott, but one can assume that it did not differ much from other German colonies in the Far East, where, for example, Germans protested against the Deutschenhetze (agitation towards Germans), but at the same time tried to make clear that the anti–Jewish boycott in Germany was at least formally an initiative of the NSDAP and not of the German state itself. For an exemplary source, see: “Maßnahmen gegen die Deutschenhetze im Ausland. Der Boykott gegen Deutschland wird mit dem Boykott gegen die Juden beantwortet” [Measures against the agitation towards Germans abroad. The boycott against Germany will be answered with a boycott against the Jews], Deutsch Chinesische Nachrichten 765, 30 March 1933, 1.

  29. 29.

    Z. Huimin, Die Deutsche Beziehungen zum Man – zhou – guo und dem Wang Jing – wei Regime, history department, National Chengchi University, September 1995, 4; see also Gabriele Ratenhof, Das Deutsche Reich und die internationale Krise um die Mandschurei 1931-1933. Die deutsche Fernostpolitik als Spiegel und Instrument deutscher Revisionspolitik (Frankfurt a.M.,: Peter Lang, 1984).

  30. 30.

    United States Library of Congress, Japan. Ministry of Foreign Affairs S Series, Reel 431, frames 286–287, Morishima Morioto to Mutō Nobuyoshi, 25 April, 1933, cited from: Avraham Altman, “Controlling the Jews, Manchukuo Style,” in Jews in China. From Kaifeng …to Shanghai, ed. Roman Malek (Sankt Augustin: Steyler Verlag, 2000), 279–317, here 293.

  31. 31.

    See: David Goodman and Miyazawa Miyazawa, Jews in the Japanese Mind. The History and Uses of a Cultural Stereotype (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2000); Heinz Eberhard Maul, “Juden und Japaner. Studie über die Judenpolitik des Kaiserreiches Japan während der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus 1933–1945“ (Ph.D. diss., Rheinischen Friedrich–Wilhelms–Universität zu Bonn, 2000).

  32. 32.

    Cyrus Adler, Jacob Henry Schiff: a Biographical Sketch (Eastbourne: Gardners Books, 2007); Gary Dean Best, “Financing a foreign war: Jacob H. Schiff and Japan, 1904–05,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 61 (1972): 313–24; Priscilla Roberts, “Jewish bankers, Russia, and the Soviet Union, 1900–1940: The case of Kuhn, Loeb and Company,” American Jewish Archives Journal 49 (1997): 9–37.

  33. 33.

    Cited in Maul, “Juden und Japaner,” 30.

  34. 34.

    Ibid.

  35. 35.

    Ben-Itto, Hadassa, The lie that wouldn’t die: the Protocols of the elders of Zion (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2005).

  36. 36.

    Later, in 1938, Yasue Norihiro was appointed head of the intelligence division of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria. Gerhard Krebs, “The ‘Jewish Problem’ in Japanese–German Relations, 1933–1945,” in Japan in the Fascist Era, ed. E. Bruce. Reynolds (New York: Palgrave, 2004), 107–32, here 109. On the impact of the protocols in Japan see: Jacob Korvalio, The Russian Protocols of Zion in Japan: Yudayaka/Jewish Peril Propaganda and Debates in the 1920s (New York: Peter Lang, 2009).

    Incidentally, Japan never adopted, and even opposed, the race–based anti–Semitism of the West, since the Japanese had been discriminated against on racial grounds themselves. Within Nazi ideology, they were seen as a people who preserved a foreign culture (kulturtragend) without creating a culture of their own (kulturschaffend), a mark of inferiority to the Germans. Krebs, “The ‘Jewish Problem’,” 111.

  37. 37.

    For the letter of protest drafted by the “non–party members” in HEDO see: “Protest kharbinskoi evreiskoi obshchiny,” Kharbinskoe Vremia 106, 23 April, 1933,10; for the resolution of the rally: “Kharbinskaia Nedelia,” Evreskaia Zhizn’ 14, 5 May, 1933, 21.

  38. 38.

    “Kharbinskaia Nedelia,” Evreskaia Zhizn’ 13, 23 April, 1933, 26.

  39. 39.

    “Jews attacked in Harbin,” Israel’s Messenger, 1 March 1932, 15.

  40. 40.

    See Ben-Canaan, The Kaspe File.

  41. 41.

    Verba, Secret Agent, 191–4; Stephen, Russian Fascists, 80.

  42. 42.

    For the Revisionist Movement see: Leonid Brenner, The iron wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir (London: Zed 1984); Yaakov Shavit, Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement 1925–1948 (London: Frank Cass 1988); Colin Shindler, The Triumph of Military Zionism. Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right (London: I. B. Tauris & Co., 2006); Eran Kaplan, The Jewish Radical Right: Revisionist Zionism and its Ideological Legacy (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2005).

  43. 43.

    “Kharbinskie evrei protestuiut” [The Jews of Harbin Protest], Kharbinskoe Vremia 108, 25April 1933, 6.

  44. 44.

    “Kharbinskie evrei protestuiut,” Harbin Herold 99, 22 April 1933, 4.

    Many Jews worldwide, especially in the United States, did not participate in the boycott. Some rejected the idea of a boycott on religious grounds. There is no indication that any orthodox Rabbi supported the boycott, and those who observed it often did so on moral grounds. The American Jewish Committee, for example, called the boycott “unethical” and “unJewish.” Another potential motive was the fear, often justified in light of the fascist movements in the United States, Great Britain, and elsewhere, that a boycott would just fuel anti–Semitism further. Finally, by the end of April, Hitler had already shown with his infamous and brutal national boycott of Jewish shops on 1 April that his intention to make the German Jews pay for any anti–German agitation was not an idle threat. For the debate about the boycott among Jews see: William Orbach, “Shattering the Shackles of Powerlessness: The Debate surrounding the Anti–Nazi Boycott of 1933–41,” Modern Judaism 2 (1982): 149–69.

  45. 45.

    “Harbin Jews boycott German Goods,” Israel’s Messenger, 1933, 22.

  46. 46.

    Mitteilungs- und Verordnungsblatt der Landesgruppe Ostasien der NSDAP 9/1, February 1934, 26.

  47. 47.

    Moshe: The Anti–German Boycott Movement, 438.

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  1. Cluster of Excellence “Europe and Asia” at the University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

    Susanne Hohler

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Correspondence to Susanne Hohler .

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  1. School of Western Studies, Heilongjiang University, Harbin

    Dan Ben-Canaan

  2. Karl Jaspers Centre, Cluster "Asia and Europe in a Global Context", Heidelberg, Germany

    Frank Grüner

  3. German Historical Institute, Washington, District of Columbia, USA

    Ines Prodöhl

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Hohler, S. (2014). “Kharbinger” of Trouble. Anti-German Protest and Power Relations in a Manchurian City 1933. In: Ben-Canaan, D., Grüner, F., Prodöhl, I. (eds) Entangled Histories. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02048-8_8

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