Witness to History: From Vienna to Shanghai: A Memoir of Escape, Survival and Resilience

Product Description On the rainy afternoon of November 28,1938, a slight 18-year-old Austrian man took in his first impressions of Shanghai. Paul Hoffmann had left his family and all that was familiar to him in Vienna and was now among a forlorn stream of thousands of Jewish refugees into China to escape Nazism. For the next thirteen years, Shanghai would be his home, and he made the most of the last years of the foreign-dominated world of old Shanghai. Witness to History is the moving memoir of a man caught up in the tides of history, who witnessed and experienced the Nazi revolution in Europe, the Japanese invasion of China and the Communist victory in China in 1949, and emerged from the challenges all the wiser. In Shanghai, he taught mathematics, lived the high life, and worked for an American lawyer, Norwood Altman, who was also secretly the US spy chief in China before and after the Communist takeover. Review "Hoffmann's memoir furnishes the reader with a deep sense of a life forced into movement by the Nazi Regime. It is through his story, that we become acquainted with life as a refugee in Shanghai during the Holocaust. This aspect of the Holocaust is underrepresented in Holocaust literature. His quips provide a glimpse into to his personality and a human quality to his story." - Sarah Snyder, Director of the Holocaust Education Resource and Outreach (HERO) Center About the Author Paul Hoffmann was born in Vienna, Austria on October 14, 1920. He was the first member of his family to flee Nazi-occupied Austria for Shanghai, China in October 1938. Paul and his family survived World War II in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. Despite having spent two years in the Hongkew Ghetto, Paul found work at the American Private School and graduated from Aurora University. Upon graduation in 1946, he was employed by a prominent American law firm, which he single-handedly managed for two years after the Communist takeover of China in 1949 until February 1952. Paul, wife Shirley, and their one-year-old son, Abe, arrived in New York City in April 1953. Their second child, Jean, was born the following year. Paul had a successful career as a corporate lawyer. He spent the last 29 years of his career as Trademark Counsel for General Electric Company. Paul passed away in March 2010.Jean Hoffmann Lewanda was born in April of 1954 in New York City, one year after Paul and Shulamis Hoffmann arrived in America. She received an undergraduate degree from the University at Albany, her masters degree from New York University, and a Sixth Year Certificate from the University of Connecticut. Jean was a Special Educator for forty years in both private and public schools across all grade levels in the Greater Hartford area in Connecticut. Now retired, Jean lives in Yardley, Pennsylvania near her children and grandchildren. She now shares her family story by participating in Holocaust Education programs.