We went through it. We didn't make it up. It's not made up.

— Susanne Goldfarb

Biography

Susanne Hafner Goldfarb was born in Vienna, Austria, on February 17, 1933. She was the only child of a middle-class Jewish family. Nazi Germany annexed Austria in March 1938. Rising anti-Semitism and the threat of war prompted her family to flee their homeland in early 1939.

Six-year-old Susanne and her family left Europe on a luxury liner bound for Shanghai, China. They found refuge with more than 20,000 other European Jewish exiles in the Japanese-occupied sector of that city. The refugees were able to create a mulitfaceted Jewish community in Shanghai.It included commercial, religious, cultural, and educational institutions. Susanne attended synagogue, studied in Jewish schools, and belonged to a Zionist social club.

The Hafners eked out a living by delivering bread in their neighborhood, the Hongkew district. In May 1943, Japanese authorities introduced anti-Semitic measures. The Hongkew district turned into a Jewish ghetto and all Shanghai Jews were restricted to this area.

As World War II unfolded, Shanghai came under increased assault from U.S. warplanes. Susanne's family worked as air raid wardens and suffered the terror of heavy bombing attacks. In August 1945, the U.S. liberated the Hongkew Ghetto. Soon after, China descended into civil war. In 1949 the Chinese Communists came to power. The Hafners, fearing persecution under the communist regime, immigrated to Israel in January 1949.

In 1953, the Hafners immigrated to New York City. They lived in an insulated community of Jewish refugees until 1969. In New York Susanne met Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, whom she married in 1963. The Goldfarbs moved to Madison, Wisconsin, in 1969. Susanne worked with the University of Wisconsin's Office of Foreign Students and Faculty until her death in June 1987.

Pictures

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