(Yicai Global) Dec. 10 -- The Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum, built in memory of the 20,000 Jews who sheltered in the city during the Holocaust, re-opened to the public this week after almost three years of renovations.

The expanded museum, which is on the site of the former Ohel Moshe Synagogue in Shanghai’s Hongkou district, has quadrupled in size to 4,000 square meters and now houses almost 1,000 cultural relics from the previous 150. Most of the exhibits are donations from former Jewish refugees and their descendants.

The reopening has attracted a great deal of interest abroad. Many overseas Jews logged onto the Chinese social messaging app WeChat that night to ask their Chinese friends to send them pictures of the museum’s refurbishment.

“I cannot wait to go back to Shanghai to see the museum’s new make-over,” Arthur Schneieir, founder and chairman of interfaith coalition The Appeal of Conscience Foundation, told Yicai Global. He spoke for many others who are unable to travel due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Danny Spungen, who now lives in Chicago, is a benefactor of the museum and was instrumental in sourcing many of the donated items.

82-year-old Kurt Wick, who now lives in London, has gifted a whole wall of 8,000 books related to the Jews and Jewish culture.

Hnnelore Esquenazi, who now lives in Brazil, donated her German passport from the time and a silver whistle, a symbol of the young Jewish men who took turns to guard and maintain order in the community. Each guard had an armband, rope and whistle.

Shanghai was a safe haven for Jews fleeing Europe in the 1930s and 1940s as it did not require entry with a visa. The Jews were appointed a one kilometer square ‘restricted living area for refugees without nationality’ in northern central Shanghai near the Huangpu River where they lived peacefully until the end of the Second World War. After the war they emigrated to all parts of the world, but their memories of Shanghai never faded.

Editor: Kim Taylor