Refuge and Rejection: Hong Kong’s Overlooked Holocaust History

The history of Hong Kong reveals the overlooked role of colonialism in shaping global responses to the Holocaust.

British Hong Kong was one of the last ports for the Jewish refugees to visit before finding a semi-permanent settlement in other parts of Asia. However, Hong Kong’s role studying the global Holocaust has largely been overlooked. CMS affiliate and PhD candidate Ryan Cheuk Him Sun examines the conflicting role that Hong Kong played, one that both provided shelter to the refugees but also interned and expelled them. 

Key Findings

• Holocaust studies have long centered on Europe, overlooking the little-known history of Jewish refugees in Hong Kong

• Hong Kong played a conflicting role during the Holocaust, first providing shelter to Jewish refugees from Europe, and then later expelling them.

• Hong Kong’s status as a former British colony reveals the contradictions of imperial policy during the Holocaust, simultaneously rescuing and rejecting Jewish refugees.

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Recommendations

• It is important to recognize that antisemitism has never been just a Euro-American idea; antisemitism can be traced around the world, including East and Southeast Asia.

• The story of the Holocaust must be told from multiple world regions to provide a global approach to the Jewish experience and to understanding antisemitism.

• As countries today face new refugee flows, the experiences of Jewish asylum-seekers in Hong Kong show that offering refuge matters, especially at times of conflicts.

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Implications for Current Events

September 2–3 marks Victory over Japan Day in the US and China, commemorating the Pacific theatre’s end in WWII. On this 80th anniversary of the war’s conclusion, it’s a reminder that the fight against fascism, and the suffering it caused, extended far beyond Europe.

By uncovering Hong Kong’s overlooked role in Holocaust-era displacement, the article highlights how colonial policies helped shape both the survival and exclusion of Jewish refugees. The story also offers a hopeful reminder: Hong Kong and other Asian cities did once open their doors to those in need, demonstrating a legacy of humanitarian response. The contradictions of colonial asylum and exclusion help explain why the 1951 UN Refugee Convention was necessary in the first place—codifying the right to refuge after years of failure. As governments revisit migration policy in the face of current crises, these histories remind us of the urgent need to balance security with compassion and justice. At a time when the world is still dealing with refugee crises and rising anti-religious sentiment, these overlooked stories are more important than ever. 

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About the Authors

Cheuk Him Ryan Sun is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at UBC. His transnational research expands the geography of Jewish exile outside Europe and beyond Shanghai, to consider the British colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore. He adopts a refugee-centered approach that highlights the agency and mobilities of Austrian and German-Jewish refugees in formulating their escape plans, while slowly becoming entangled with the wartime policies of British colonial administrations. His work shows how the distinct experiences of Jewish refugees in Hong Kong and Singapore have been ignored or subsumed within more standard narratives. He is particularly interested in Jewish refugees’ ship-bound experiences, especially how transiting through colonial port-cities and encountering local inhabitants informed Jewish refugees’ understanding of ‘the Orient’.

Zixi (Peter) Zhang is a PhD student in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia. He studies early modern East Asia with a focus on China. His current research centers on the Chinese intellectual diaspora during the Ming-Qing transition in the 17th century.

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This publication is part of the CMS Migration Insights Series. The research briefs synthesize peer-reviewed, published academic research by CMS affiliates.