![Ernest G. Heppner [LCID: 4284]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/e399def8-4528-4aac-bf28-5f063f87d946.gif "Ernest G. Heppner [LCID: 4284]")
Ernest was one of three children born to a Jewish family in the commercial city of Breslau, which had one of the largest Jewish communities in Germany. His father, a World War I veteran, owned a factory that made matzah, the unleavened bread used during the Jewish holiday of Passover. Ernest was 12 when Hitler took power in 1933.
1933-39: Ernest often got in trouble at school because people called him names. "Christ-killer" and "your father kills Christian babies for Passover" were common taunts. Many thought the Nazis were a passing political fad but by 1935 their laws were menacing. Signs appeared declaring, "Jews are forbidden." In 1938, after his synagogue was burned (during Kristallnacht), his family realized they had to flee Germany. Since his family could only get two tickets, Ernest and his mother boarded a ship for Asia, leaving their family behind.
1940-44: Ernest ended up in Japanese-controlled Shanghai, the only place refugees could land without a visa. There, as a volunteer driving a truck for the British army's Shanghai Volunteer Force, he got meals and was better off than many other refugees. After Pearl Harbor, in December 1941, conditions among the city's refugees worsened--American relief funds, the refugees' lifeline, could not reach Shanghai. In 1943, under pressure from Germany, the Japanese set up a ghetto.
Ernest spent two years in the Shanghai ghetto before the city was liberated in 1945. After the war, he worked for the U.S. Air Force in Nanking, China, for several years, and later immigrated to the United States.
Item View![Leo Hanin [LCID: 4514]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/dba77bac-8d91-4fe6-9178-54296c3da42f.gif "Leo Hanin [LCID: 4514]")
Leo's Jewish family lived in Vilna, which in 1913 was part of the Russian Empire. In 1916, fearing revolution, his family left for Harbin in northern China, a city with a well-organized Jewish community. There Leo joined a Zionist group and studied Jewish history, and for two years attended a Jewish primary school and learned Hebrew. He then studied at a Russian secondary school in Harbin.
1933-39: When Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931 and conditions in Harbin deteriorated, Leo's parents sent him to Shanghai. There he attended a British school and learned English, and he also served in the Jewish Shanghai Volunteer Corps, which protected Shanghai's foreign citizens. Leo got a job at a textile import firm that sent him, in 1937, to Kobe, Japan. The small Jewish community there elected him its honorary secretary.
1940-44: In 1940 and 1941 many Jewish refugees from Poland and Lithuania were saved from the Holocaust by receiving transit visas via Japan, which were issued to them by the Japanese vice-consul in Kovno. These refugees traveled by train across the Soviet Union to Vladivostok, where they were eventually transported by ship to Kobe, Japan. There Leo's small Jewish community looked after them by finding them homes, donating medical supplies and clothing, and arranging their visas so they could stay on in Japan.
In 1942 Leo returned to Shanghai and spent the rest of the war working there. He immigrated to Israel in 1948 and later moved to the United States.
Item View![Walter Schnell [LCID: 5074]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/12336b68-ac05-41c4-bb6b-b1486b2b79cb.gif "Walter Schnell [LCID: 5074]")
Walter was born to a Jewish family in the German town of Strehlen, 25 miles south of Breslau. His family's crystal business was prominent in the town for more than 100 years. Walter's parents sent him to Berlin in the mid-1920s to learn the porcelain trade. He returned to Strehlen in 1926 to help his family run the business.
1933-39: In 1937 Walter's family moved to Breslau. After the German pogroms of 1938 [Kristallnacht, Night of Broken Glass], he was deported to Buchenwald. When he arrived he was forced through a tunnel while Nazis beat them with clubs. Chaos broke out in the camp. Some prisoners ran around the compound while guards shot at them; others ran headlong into the electric fence. In December Walter's parents got documents for him to go to Panama. The Nazis, assured that he would leave the country, released him.
1940-44: Walter couldn't get a visa to Panama, so his only option was to go to Shanghai, the only place that didn't require a visa. Most of the Jews lived in a suburb called Hongkew, until Pearl Harbor, when the Japanese confined them in a ghetto. Walter was in Shanghai for four years, and was the manager from 1941 to 1945 of the General Kosher Kitchen, which supplied food for thousands of Orthodox Jews. There were several synagogues in Shanghai and the Jewish community was active. In 1944 the Americans began bombing Shanghai.
After the war, Walter remained in China working at the kitchen. In April 1947 he immigrated to the United States.
Item ViewErnest's family owned a factory that made matzah, the unleavened bread eaten during Passover. In February 1939, three months after Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass" pogroms), Ernest and his mother fled to Shanghai, one of few havens for refugees without visas. His father and sister stayed behind in Germany; they perished during the Holocaust. A brother escaped to England. Ernest and his mother found work in Shanghai. In 1947, he came to the United States with his wife, whom he met and married in Shanghai.
Item View
We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies, Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation, the Claims Conference, EVZ, and BMF for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of donor acknowledgement.
