When you present yourself to the Committee for the Assistance of
European Jews in Shanghai (CFA), the employment officer asks about
your previous training. You tell him that you had several years of medical
school in Berlin, and he seems excited. We can use you right here,
he
exclaims, teaching other refugees about sanitary housing and proper
nutrition.
You are pleased to work for CFA because it appears to be doing very important work. Nearly 17,000 refugee Jews have crowded into a small area of Shanghai, where it is very difficult for them to find places to stay, proper food to eat, and, especially, work to do. There simply aren't many jobs. The rich Sephardim who head the CFA, Victor Sassoon and Silas Hardoon, spend a good deal of their own money to provide resettlement help, but even that is not enough. A little money trickles in from the Joint Distribution Committee, but this aid is cut off when Japan attacks Pearl Harbor.
Many of the refugees resent that no one asks their advice in running the CFA; they have no control over matters that mean a great to them. After a while, it appears that you cannot continue at the CFA.
If you decide to work for a new organization run by the refugees themselves, continue to page 121.
If you choose to look for a different job, having had enough of refugee resettlement, continue to page 122.