Throughout my last day in San Francisco, I looked back to my last 3 1/2 months of summer. I still remembered my advisor's e-mail in June when I reported to her on how things were going. She was happy that I was having a very productive summer. At first I thought, "Well, I don't know... I feel like I still have plenty of downtime..." At first, it felt like being on vacation in San Francisco. Now, I realized that this summer had been productive in sense of giving my time to do my work. I tried to do something for at least 3 hours or more each day except for Fridays and Saturdays (I have been stuck on Israeli work week schedule since returning two years ago!). It might be working on my computer, getting things organized and e-mailing people about transcripts, appointments, and information. It might be taking Van Ness bus down to the library to browse a month's worth of San Francisco Chronicle. It might be on the phone, making appointments. Or preparing and thinking about my day's interview appointment. In any way, I felt that I was making steps forward to creating a thick binder full of notes to go through in September. Even in Israel, I showed up for classes everyday on time. I made sure that my second trip to San Francisco was very productive in terms of getting all the rest of the materials before I resign myself to mircofilm only access at Michigan. It wasn't always a chunk of 3 hours but just spread over the day (you know, those "start exercising by breaking up 30 minutes into 3 10 minutes workouts). I had to be very flexible in order to work around various people's schedules. So in all, I loved my workdays as I'm in "schedule-doesn't-matter-so-as-long-things-get-done" school.
I sigh with disbelief on how I made this summer so productive in comparison to the last two or three years. I was a serious bum in the last two summers in Israel and Rochester. I couldn't take an internship or a job as my sessions in Israel fell during the month of July. It certainly had been a while since I *worked* on regular hours.
I got the experience of living in a city that had once been my vacation destination as a working woman. Did I like this change? (Washington hadn't been a vacation destination as my family and I rarely ever went in the city when we visited my uncle in the suburbs.)
In many ways, yes and no. I learned to navigate San Francisco on my own, explored new neighborhoods and eateries, and experienced what it's like to live in one of the world's most expensive cities (Tel Aviv is expensive on an Israeli salary, especially with the rent). In other ways, living there diminished the excitement of going to certain places upon arrival because, well, they're there. So what?
Yet, I enjoyed learning about San Francisco Jewish heritage and what made San Francisco Jews tick. I also needed the feeling of being isolated from the East Coast, away from Yiddish influenced culture into inherently American, Californian inspired culture. Each city has its reasons to be proud of. For San Franciscans, they indeed look down upon nearly every major Pacific port city and proclaimed San Francisco to be ideal. The weather, long history since Gold Rush, low-key liberal atmosphere, and high rate of assimilation defined San Francisco. Oh yes, they love the fog. (For them, it's hellva better than rain!) I've heard critics lambasting San Franciscans and Californians for most part for living in the past and believing that their Golden Age had yet to pass (By Golden Age, I do mean the decades following Gold Rush that brought wealth to the area from industries, port shipping, and exploitation of natural resources). They said, "San Franciscans, wake up! You're in middle of a budget crisis!!!" Although there's nothing I could do about Muni and BART's woes, I could understand where San Franciscans came from with their native pride due to its early years of building a new American city.
As I progress with my project, I learn more about my paper in sense of topics it will cover. It empasses such a wide variety of topics within that without a strong framework, it will get muddled. There are number of things I will need to emphasize what this is all about.
*Jewish refugees in the United States, not only Shanghai Jews but also need to mention the Russian Jews as it was the source of anger for Shanghai Jews when they reflect on assistance from Jewish organizations. The contrast between European refugees and Soviet refugees demonstrated the change in American Jews' education and awareness of the Diaspora.
*San Francisco Jews clearly separating themselves from the rest of American Jewish population, including Los Angeles (especially Los Angeles) by identifying themselves to be free of Yiddish/European yolk, assimilated into American culture (as far as having Christmas trees), and I believe, saw Judaism as peoplehood, not religious nor cultural.
*Distance to the Pacific theater frightened all San Francisco Jews yet they shuddered a bit as they sponsored distant relatives from Germany from 1938 to 1940. "We knew something bad was happening that we had to sponsor them but we didn't know."
*Like many other Jews in America, I believe, San Francisco Jews were no exception in participating in war efforts. Their location heightened their desire to fight the Japanese and give their best efforts to help the United States win. Nazi Germany was still an enemy but war hysterics dictated their attitudes. "The Japanese attacked us! We were so afraid that they'd bomb this city..." Gradually, however, the Jews admitted that as the war dragged on, it became important to fight both fronts, not only the Pacific.
*After the war, individual San Francisco Jews turned their attention away from the aftermath of European war to focus on all the returning servicemen, return of normalcy, and building of homes in the Presidio, Richmond, Sunset, and Sea Cliff neighborhoods. Presidio had been the home of military activities. Families wanted to move out into bigger dwellings, thus this was the beginning of surburbia within the city. Also, the Jewish population became even more spread out, creating multiple bubbles that left them unaware of other neighborhood Jewish communities like Shanghai Jews in the Sunset district.
*As predicted, Shanghai Jews, when they could, maintained its refugee community as it had in Shanghai within the "ghetto". Baghdadi and Russian Jews were probably left out of the resettled community.
*Jewish migration pattern changed due to suburbia and rules of resettlement for the newcomers. Prior migration patterns should be taken note as well as many of San Francisco Jews hailed from German Jewish background. Only one family who I interviewed came after the 1906 earthquake from the East but they were still German.
This project still raises questions in which I will write all over my new whiteboard. While this project revealed interesting perspectives, I must think further how does this fit within scholarship in American history, American Jewish history, and Holocaust history.
I enjoyed every interview that I conducted with San Francisco natives and Shanghai Jews. I loved listening to Shanghai Jews' accents (mostly German, still heavy after all these years!) and admired their resilence. San Francisco natives shared their idealism and journey to their Jewish identities. I was shocked that many had grown up with Christmas trees but had to laugh afterwards because how they saw Christmas trees was how I saw them when I was growing up as well! (I did not, unfortunately, had a Christmas tree.) Sometimes it was challenging to convince San Francisco natives that their stories were important to my project because often after reading my consent form, they exclaimed, "But I didn't know anything! I knew nothing! I can't help you..." Shanghai Jews weren't easy as well as some of them were exhausted from many interviews over the years or experienced different forms of losses that made them unwilling to share at the moment. I had to use my charm to persuade them into believing that they could trust me that their stories mattered in the face of history. I knew that many Shanghai Jews would come out a-okay but I wanted to know just how difficult it was to get sympathy and assistance from American Jews as that was the point of my project.
I owe so many thanks to people who assisted me in the archives, friends of my grandparents in giving me contacts, and of course, my grandparents for providing me a bed and a kitchen.
One thing that did hit me hard was having one Shanghai Jew cancelling on me and later finding out that he was "very old and frail". I realized what Holocaust centers really meant when they say that we're "racing against time" in obtaining testimonies. I did manage to obtain testimonies from many of Shanghai Jews because they did want to talk a bit about their experiences even though I gave them the option to skip over to 1947-1948. It makes me wonder what will my job as a historian in a Holocaust museum/center will look like 20 years from now when the survivors were only small children. The world just lost the last WWI veteran and a Titanic survivor. Next will be somebody in the Russian Revolution. Soon enough, it will be the Holocaust. All we will have left are testimonies and recordings. I am extremely fortunate enough to have opportunities to interact with Nazi refugees in person so that I will never forget their voices and facial expressions as they articulated their stories in front of me.
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