Maurice Sachs – One Man who Wanted to get to Shanghai

For reasons I surely do not to elaborate for China Rhyming readers Shanghai was a magnet in the 1930s for those looking to escape from criminal pasts in Europe, who needed to get themselves gone. In the run up to the Second World War Shanghai was of course a paradise for gangsters, adventurers, crooks, conmen and the generally shifty as well as a port of last resort for refugees from war torn Europe, Bolshevik Russia or Nazi antisemitism.

Interestingly throughout the war Shanghai maintained itself as a far off distant dream for many who needed to escape Europe for one reason or another, even after the International Settlement fell to the Japanese following Pearl Harbor (and remembering that the French Concession remained open to many and controlled by the puppet Vichyite government of occupied France).

One who longed to get to Shanghai has interested me for a while since I first heard of him – Maurice Sachs. Sachs was a quite incredible figure, though not a particularly admirable one. He was a Parisian, born in 1906 of Jewish descent. He had spent some time in London and spoke good English. He converted to Catholicism though it didn’t stick and his fairly openly gay lifestyle rather jarred with his adopted religion, so he largely dropped it (the religion, not the lifestyle). He was a conman before the war – masquerading as an art dealer in New York and a jewelery dealer in Paris. He served in the French army briefly at the start of WW2 but was kicked out for his sexual choices. His memoir of the war years, where he manage to stay at liberty in Paris for some time despite his criminal activities and Jewish ancestry – The Hunt – are a fascinating record of the city’s underworld – both bohemian/gay and criminal – during the Nazi occupation. He dealt illegally in gold, smuggled Jewish families out of the city and may have betrayed others to the Gestapo. Being somewhat contrarian he moved to Hamburg when forced to flee Paris – a not necessarily obvious choice in 1942 for a gay criminal French Jew!!

Reading his letters from his Hamburg years he became obsessed with moving on to China, specifically to Shanghai. He imagines Shanghai as a city that would suit him perfectly, forgive his transgressions and allow him to live the lifestyle he liked and provide ample opportunity for grifting and cons. He longed to sail to Shanghai and did actually investigate ways that he might be able to earn the passage and take ship.

To be fair Sachs might well have prospered in Shanghai – plenty like him did. However, before he could make the trip from Europe to Shanghai he was arrested by the Gestapo. Imprisoned, when the British approached, the Germans forced him and other prisoners to walk in atrocious conditions away from the advancing Brits. Sachs was too weak to continue, was shot through the neck and dumped by the side of the road by the Nazis.

Sachs cared little for the Jews, for the fate of France or for anyone really..except whichever man he was infatuated with at any given moment. But in 1945 Shanghai he just might have found a ready reception for talents!!

aurice