Nazi Scaremongering Propaganda against Jews in Shanghai, 1939 – Ritualistic Killings on the Baikal Road

I’ve blogged before about the various tactics the Nazi authorities resident in Shanghai in the 1930s used against the Jewish population of the International Settlement (here, threatening retribution against their relatives back in Europe if they staged an anti-Nazi play in Hongkew). Here though is another tactic the Nazis used in Shanghai – dredging up the old ‘Jewish blood rituals’ nonsense.

It’s a long standing bit of rubbish used by Nazis in Europe and anti-Semites for ages….here given a Shanghai twist. The gist is that Jews had an ‘operating table’ in the Jewish cemetery in the old Eastern District (Yangpu nowadays) where they ritualistically murdered non-Jews. The Nazi slanders intimated that such ritualistic killings by Jews of non-Jews had gone on during the First World War. This was, of course, and as the Shanghai Municipal Council and the newspapers including the North-China Daily News reported, nonsense – not least because the Jewish cemetery (at 727 Baikal Road in Yangtszepoo District – now Huimi Road/Weiming Road in Yangpu) was only founded in 1917 and didn’t really come into use until 1919. However, it does show how active the Nazi propaganda machine was in spreading anti-Semitic ideas in Shanghai in the late 1930s and 1940s.

What is not totally clear is who exactly the Nazi agents were directing their propaganda at? Shanghailanders or Chinese in Shanghai.

BTW: Baikal Road was the biggest Jewish cemetery in Shanghai, consisting of 1,692 graves. The dismantling of monuments and exhumation of remains started September 1958 and was completed November 1958. Re-interment was reportedly completed on December 1958.