How many times can you be vaccinated? In this post I will share a paragraph describing a Central European refugee’s encounter with Japanese anti-cholera vaccination practices in wartime Shanghai. Before the translated quote, I will give a short introduction of the author, who might become a regular guest on this blog in the future.
(L) A hand bill from New York City, 1832 with some outdated public health advice (New York Historical Society) and (R) Chinese Red Cross Juniors explaining cholera posters to street crowd in Shanghai, 1920s (picryl.com)
László (Ladislaus) Frank (1890-1967) was a refugee or as he preferred to call himself, an emigrant (emigráns) for multiple times. As a progressive intellectual he fled his home city Budapest after the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919), to work as a journalist in the 1920s Berlin and Vienna. With the rise of Adolf Hitler he relocated again from the Third Reich to the still independent Austria putting great effort in investigative journalism. Following his imprisonment and subsequent release after the Anschluss in 1938, he left Europe to spend almost a decade as a Jewish refugee in war-torn China. Just like his fellow Viennese emigrant Adolf Storfer, Frank too worked for, edited and even founded several German-speaking newspapers for readers in the exiled Central European community of Shanghai. After the end of World War Two, Frank was involved in organizing the local Hungarian community into a “democratic, antifascist” union opposing the older association led by the wartime Hungarian honorary consul and well-known architect László (Ladislav) Hudec, whose group Frank’s regarded as “collaborationist and reactionary”. Frank’s tenure in Shanghai came to an end when the UN refugee agency (UNRRA) confirmed his name on the repatriation-lists and he was able return first to Vienna, then to Budapest. He lived the final two decades of his life in communist Hungary, “a dream coming true” after seeing his native land adopting the Marxist principles Frank was advocating for since his youth.
The following paragraph about his vaccination-adventure is from his 1960-memoir published in Hungarian in Budapest. The book follows Frank’s life from the late Vienna-years to his departure from Shanghai. The translation of the passage into English is mine, further corrections are to come, any helpful suggestions is appreciated in comments or private messages! In the future, I’ll probably share more from this book, as it’s a rich and little-consulted collection of valuable insights about the life of Shanghai’s Central European refugee community.
“The insufficient nutrition and the lack of vitamins were claiming more and more victims in the emigrant district. The number of people falling ill to beriberi [vitamin B1 deficiency] and ukránka [typhus] kept increasing, leaving many of the patients dead. One of the reasons of the rising mortality-rate was the spread of cholera, an epidemic of which Shanghai was already contaminated. About two thousand people died per day because of cholera. Since the epidemy also threatened the Japanese garrison, the high command ordered the compulsory immunization of the population. However, the Chinese didn’t want to take the shots. They were fatalists, believing that those destined to die in cholera will die anyway. Finally, the Japanese turned to a radical solution. In a matter of minutes, the military closed down every direction of a given street, blocking thousands of people in a mousetrap. At one end of the street stood a doctor and a few nurses, all protected by bayoneted Japanese soldiers, and whoever wanted to leave the street needed to let themselves vaccinated first. We in the Heim [refugee home], were vaccinated on the following day after the declaration was made public. In the next two weeks however, bad luck found me twice. The road I used to walk at that time was closed and I was given the anti-cholera serum-shots repeatedly, for the second and third times whether I wanted them or not. Fortunately, it didn’t have any [fatal] consequence. Actually, the people of Shanghai benefitted from the strict regulation. After within a month 3 million people were immunized, the number of cholera-infections decreased. While didn’t disappear entirely, in January 1944 it rarely occurred anymore. Perhaps this anti-cholera campaign was the only salutary regulation during the Japanese occupation.”
Frank, László. Sanghajba menekültem [I fled to Shanghai]. Budapest: Gondolat Kiadó, 1960., 210.
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