Her parents tried to hide their desperation, but Miriam Brookfield can remember anxious days scrambling to escape the growing power of the Nazis.
Brookfield, 98, and a longtime resident of Whittier, was born in Chemnitz, Germany, the only child of Willy and Dora Fleischmann. On Saturday, she shared her memories in advance of International Holocaust Memorial Day, marked this year on Monday.
She was 11 in 1936 when she remembers other children in her school learning to be cruel.
“They called me dirty Jew and really were taking in all the propaganda they heard,” she said.
Miriam Fleischmann Brookfield, 99, of Whittier was a teenager when her family fled Nazi Europe and found sanctuary in Shanghai, China. (Photo courtesy of The Oakmont at Whittier)
“Hidden History” a traveling exhibit recounting the Shanghai Jewish story includes a chapter about Jewish refugees who escaped the Nazis and resettled in the Chinese city during World War II. (Photo courtesy of Holocaust Museum LA)
Show Caption1 of 2Miriam Fleischmann Brookfield, 99, of Whittier was a teenager when her family fled Nazi Europe and found sanctuary in Shanghai, China. (Photo courtesy of The Oakmont at Whittier)
ExpandHer parents sent her to live with her maternal grandmother in Leipzig, a bigger city with a substantial Jewish community. Miriam learned basic English as she waited to be reunited with her parents.
Willy Fleischmann wrote letters to embassies in countries they never even heard of. He sent one poignant missive to the family that owned Fleischmann’s Yeast Company in Ohio, asking if they were somehow related, could they help find a way to get them out of Europe? No answer came.
Her father would later try four or five times to escape to Belgium. In 1939, he was arrested and brought to the attention of the Nazi Gestapo. While the man in charge of his arrest stalled for the family, Dora Fleischmann heard of another family trying to sell tickets to Shanghai, China. She snapped up the tickets, presented them to the man, who helped them leave 10 days later. The family boarded the steamship “Bianca Mano” with 500 other Jews. Miriam was 13.
“I left with the clothes on my back and a couple of books,” she said. “We had one, I wouldn’t even call it a suitcase, a bag, and beddings. Beddings were prized. China was not in our radar at all, we thought no one went there unless they were missionaries.”
The trip took three and a half weeks and went past 12 countries, some allowing the refugees to disembark for a bit, others not. Brookfield served as a quasi-interpreter for the German-speaking passengers and Italian crew.
Her first impression of Shanghai was horrible: “There were beggars and the smells were frightening … everyone screaming in a language I didn’t understand.”
The shipload of refugees was welcomed by the diverse Jewish community in Shanghai, Jews from Egypt and Baghdad, who supported the newcomers, supplying them with Menorahs and clothes. The Committee for the Assistance of European Jewish Refugees set up soup kitchens.
The Fleischmanns were housed in a bombed boarding school that would have been park-like and beautiful if not for the burned structures and rubble. Willy and Dora shared a dormitory-style space with 12 other couples while their daughter roomed with other girls.
“We lived like that for eight years,” Brookside said. “Things got worse when war broke out in 1941 and money that had been sent from America to help us dried up.”
The Japanese military occupied and took control of Shanghai, later capitulating to Nazi pressure and establishing a “designated area” for “stateless refugees.” Brookside and her family already lived within what would be called the Hongkew Ghetto.
Food, already not the most nutritious to begin with, became scarce. People started selling items to their Chinese neighbors one by one.
Brookfield remembers picking up a few choice swear words in Chinese, the better to deter anyone from taking advantage of her. But that didn’t help when she was arrested one day and taunted by Japanese soldiers who made her stand against a wall and raised their guns at her, laughing. It turns out she had inadvertently broken a law about possessing white cotton. A Japanese officer questioned and later spared her, even feeding her breakfast.
“He asked in English if I had had breakfast,” Brookfield said. “I didn’t want to say I hardly ever had any breakfast.”
News of the end of World War II trickled into the community in 1945. Brookside remembers some Jews planning a return to Germany, Austria and Poland, thinking the relatives they left behind were waiting for them. Most would learn the names of Auschwitz and Sobibor and Dachau in later letters reporting the deaths of so six million Jews.
“I have no cousins, no uncles, no aunts,” Brookfield said.
One grandmother survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic but later died in Switzerland.
At the end of the war, Brookfield’s English skills made her valuable to post-war agencies in China, the last one being the United Nations. It was while on assignment with this group that Brookfield met Mao Tse-Tung, who visited her offices, shook her hand and gifted everyone with a photo of himself.
The Fleischmanns secured passage to the U.S. in 1947, landing in San Francisco. Brookfield remembers setting off in a city bus a couple of days later, spying a “Secretaries Needed” sign outside a building, getting off the bus and finding herself hired by Foster and Kleiser Outdoor Advertising.
It was while she was volunteering at the Jewish Community Center’s canteen that she met Air Force airman Howard Brookfield.
“I was serving coffee and he walked in,” she said.
When it was time to leave, he followed her out to her car in the pouring rain and cleaned her windshield.
“He said, ‘I’d like to take you out for coffee,’ and I said yes. He had to drive an hour out of San Francisco to come back for me, but he did it,” Brookfield said.
The two were married on Aug. 9. 1953, at Temple Chevra Tilim in San Francisco after Howard’s honorable discharge from the Air Force. Miriam wore a full-length lace and satin gown with a veiled cap, borrowed from a friend who had wed earlier that year.
The Brookfields then began an exodus from city to city as Howard’s banking career took him to different assignments. They had their three children, Debra, Leslie and David, when a friend recommended Whittier as a good place to raise a family.
They found their home on Woodcrest Drive, Howard assuring his bride they could still get their deposit back if she didn’t like it. She liked Whittier. They stayed for more than 40 years.
Her husband remained involved in Air Force matters, joining the Civil Air Patrol and serving as Brigadier General to Wing Headquarters Squadron until his death in 2019. He was 90.
“We thought alike, his family was also from Germany, and I loved how he kept his love for flying and how we found community there,” she said.
The two also traveled extensively, including two visits to China where Brookfield found the places of her wartime childhood paved over.
These days, Brookfield still loves to read, and when invited, to talk about her World War II experience with schoolchildren.
Her family’s saga was included in the traveling exhibit “Hidden History: Recounting the Shanghai Jewish Story” that made a stop at the Holocaust Museum LA. An online overview of the exhibit is available at holocaustmuseumla.org/hidden-history.
“I really try to give them a good understanding of what happened,” Brookfield said. “Most of them had not even heard the word Holocaust before. I start talking and you see their eyes widen and they hear it. Then they ask if there were any bathrooms.”
“A lot of life is circumstance,” she added. “The people you meet have a great impact in your life, some for better and some for worse. (Whatever comes), I’m game.”
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