Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

August 7, 2017

China’s Forgotten Plan to Resettle Jewish Refugees from the Third Reich

To help Jews, and to gain Western sympathy.

Officials of the then-Republic of China, under President Chiang Kai-shek, drafted a plan in 1939 to open the country’s borders to stateless Jews—of whom there were many in Europe, most of them having had their citizenship revoked by Germany or Austria—and settle them near the Burmese border. Although the proposal made it to the cabinet and was approved in principle, the government deferred and eventually dropped the idea. Aharon Shai writes:

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