Ten Green Bottles, a review
Ten Green Bottles: Vienna to Shanghai – Journey of Fear and Hope
By Vivian Jeannette Kaplan
Published 2002 by Robin Brass Studio Inc.
Detailed stories illustrate the lives of Jews in Vienna during the era of WWII. It is a valuable record of the history of those years that the Jew’s freedom of livelihood was gradually taken away and worsened everyday until finally they were reduced to a life and death situation. Thousands had been sent to concentration camps, many of the Jewish businesses and properties had been confiscated by the Nazis. Since all bank accounts were frozen by the authority, the Jews were struggling to exist. Tensed and worried, they were seeking ways to escape this brutality and struggle. Very fortunately, the author and her family finally received help from an Austrian lawyer who risked his life to secure their exit documents and paid for the train and sea passage to Shanghai, China. The Austrian lawyer Herr Bergen had been arrested and shot in 1939.
Although given a new opportunity, the author seemed indifferent to the Shanghai Chinese who had suffered persecution, starvation and atrocities by the invading Japanese Imperial Army in January 28, 1932 and August 13, 1937. It was the same situation that the Jews had experienced under the German occupation in the areas of Vienna and others countries in Europe. One such example is as the author wrote: “Debarking from the ship and setting foot for the first time on the wharf, I am filled with overwhelming nausea. Heavy, sickly odours attack my nostrils. Thick hordes of people swarm the pier and coalesce into one throbbing dark mass, a monster with hundred of wriggling arms and legs that surrounds and threatens to devour us whole. Staring at my white skin and round blue eyes, the filthy, ragged strangers laugh and cajole in their unintelligible language.” How a foreigner can judge the local language as “unintelligible language”? Another such example is as the author wrote: “I am appalled and believe this to be the most uncivilized country on earth…” There are very few paragraphs and sentences that show the author’s passion for China and its populace.
There is also one fact that was not mentioned in the book and that was that there was a Chinese ‘Schindler’— “a diplomat who ushered more than 1,000 Jews out of Austria during the Second World War.” In fact, this Chinese diplomat was a Chinese Consulate General in Nazi occupied Vienna, Mr. Ho Fengshan, who resisted his own government’s will issuing more than 4,000 visa (the number was indicated by Ho’s daughter—reference Jerusalem Post) enabling the Jews and the defiant locals to leave Austria.
Of interest:
http://www.bibleprobe.com/ho_fengshan.htm
The Angel of Austria’s Jews:
http://www.members.tripod.com/~journeyeast/angel_of_austria_s_jews.html
