Writing Chinese Nationals into the History of Nazi Germany

Abstract

Writing Chinese Nationals into the History of Nazi Germany Kimberly Cheng (bio) In 1944, thirty-eight-year-old Cheng Shu Chi (鄭紹箕) arrived in Germany as a forced laborer from Poland.1 Cheng first left Zhejiang province for Lodz in 1935 to assume a position in his cousin's silk factory. In 1939, he moved to Warsaw, where he earned money as a transportation worker. There, he married Maria Ugorowska in April 1941, converting to Catholicism and adopting the name Stanislaw. Later that same year, Nazi officials deported Cheng and his wife to Saalfeld, Thuringia, to undertake forced labor for the German war effort. Cheng worked as a sawmill worker until the war's end.2 A part of the 1.7 million Polish laborers whom the Nazis forcibly relocated to Germany, Cheng's story raises many questions.3 Did the Nazis categorize Cheng as a forced laborer from Eastern Europe or as Chinese? How did Cheng live day-to-day in Germany? What happened to Cheng's wife, and how did the Nazis regard the married couple? While the historical record does not reveal much else, Cheng's story complicates our notions of who constituted a Polish forced laborer in Germany and prompts us to question whether the Nazis adjusted their racial categories for someone like Cheng. From the 1820s onwards, Chinese nationals consistently journeyed to Germany.4 When Hitler came to power, the June 1933 census counted 827 Chinese within Germany's borders.5 At its height, the Chinese population of the Third Reich reached approximately 1,600 people, made up predominantly of men. Most were diplomats, merchants, ship-hands, traveling circus artists, and study-abroad students, who resided in cities including Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, and Munich.6 The stories of Chinese people in the Third Reich demonstrate the myriad ways that Nazi authorities treated Chinese nationals, exposing the contradictions between Nazi racial imaginings and the actual implementation of racial policy. In the Third Reich, some Chinese did end up in concentration camps. For example, in 1944, the Hamburg Gestapo rounded up 130 Chinese, sending them primarily to Fuhlsbüttel.7 Others, however, survived relatively unscathed. In fact, when a Chinese military mission arrived in Germany in 1946 to evaluate the wartime damages incurred by its nationals, the mission found that some commended how well Germans had treated them.8 Moreover, during the Nazi period, especially before 1938, some Chinese were even able to help those more vulnerable to racial persecution. Chinese [End Page 130] restaurateurs in Berlin served German Jews who were unwelcome in German-run restaurants, and some Chinese men saved German Jewish women from deportation through marriage.9 What accounts for this spectrum of Chinese experiences in Nazi Germany? Although Hitler deemed the Chinese racially unfit, Chinese nationals' foreign citizenship, socio-economic standing, and small numbers led Nazi officials to treat its Chinese population in a varied manner. Before Germany broke relations with China for Japan in 1938, the importance of Germany's China trade sometimes swayed Nazi authorities to override their own racial policies.10 Moreover, the upper-class status and societal connections of some Chinese shielded them from persecution. Lower-class and politically active leftist Chinese bore the brunt of Nazi maltreatment.11 Last, the Chinese population was so small that many Chinese simply slipped through the cracks. Regarding Germany's Chinese population, Nazi authorities at times subordinated their own racial ideology for the sake of foreign relations, the consolidation of power, and the pursuit of more salient threats. The history of Chinese nationals in the Third Reich exposes the chasm that existed between Nazi racial thinking and how Nazi authorities erected their racial state. The curious status of Chinese people reveals the tensions that lay between Nazi racial ideology, racial policy, and the application of law. Furthermore, focusing on Chinese nationals complements existing scholarship on smaller communities of racial minorities in Nazi Germany, such as the Afro-German, Korean, and Arab populations. Although demographically insignificant, the Chinese community of the Third Reich, sheds significant light on the making of race and status in the Nazi Germany. Kimberly Cheng kimberly cheng (kac780@nyu.edu) is a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the German Historical Institute...