Soundtrack for a Twist-of-Fate Story

A musical event Friday night to commemorate the end of World War II 60 years ago focused on a Jewish family and their tale of fleeing from Nazi Germany to China, a seemingly unlikely haven then under Japanese occupation.

“China was the only country that would accept us,” Rita Atterman Feder told 1,200 people -- most of them Chinese Americans -- who attended the concert at the San Gabriel Civic Auditorium.

Concertgoers said they loved the score from “Schindler’s List,” the film about a German who personally saved 1,100 Jews from death during World War II, and the “Yellow River Piano Concerto,” which depicts the bravery of boatmen on that Chinese river who suffered during the Japanese occupation.

But it was the 76-year-old Feder’s appearance and her brief remarks about her family’s refugee life in Shanghai that moved many in the audience to tears.

The Sherman Oaks resident recalled her family’s travail in trying to find a country that would accept them.

They got to Shanghai on Aug. 7, 1939 -- her 11th birthday. Nothing was familiar to her. For the next eight years, her family shared one room, her father eking out a living as a tailor.

The Chinese too were poor, she said, but they allowed her family a semblance of normality. “I thank China and Chinese people for letting us live among them -- and being so kind,” she said. “Chinese people allowed us to follow our religion and our customs.”

Though it is not widely known, Chinese Consul Feng-Shan Ho in Vienna defied his government’s policy and issued 20,000 visas that let European Jews into China from 1938 to 1940, according to organizers of the event.

The first half of the concert, performed by the United Musicians Symphony Orchestra of L.A., featured Los Angeles violinist Roberto Cani, who is Jewish. The second half featured Chinese pianist Cheng-Zong Yin.

Many attendees, including children, approached Feder to ask for her autograph and to pose for a souvenir photo during intermission. “I was overwhelmed,” she said.

Lina Zhu, a San Gabriel businesswoman who emceed the event, said she hoped that it would start a new tradition of people of many ethnicities in Southern California marking the anniversary of the war’s end together.

“Normally, Chinese people have their own commemoration every year, and Jewish people have theirs,” she said.

The audience was reminded that unlike in Europe, reconciliation has yet to come to Asia.

Germany has repented for what happened and made reparation to victims, while Japan has not come to terms with its crimes against its Asian neighbors, said Robert Tsang, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Alliance to Preserve the History of WWII in Asia.

He said that Japanese textbooks do not accurately reflect that nation’s aggression in Asia, that politicians honor war criminals by visiting the shrine where their remains are buried and that the government refuses to pay reparations to former sex slaves and forced laborers.