Prior Exhibit

October 14, 2007 – January 27, 2008

Ludwig Salzer: Man of Letters
From Exile in Shanghai to Life in the United States.


Image: Courtesy Lauren Pressler

Ludwig Salzer, born into a wealthy, educated and large Vienesse family, fled Austria to Shanghai in 1939 after the annexation of Austria by Hitler and amid increasing persecution of Jews. His granddaughter, Lauren Pressler, a student at Willamette University, has created a remarkable exhibition documenting his journey. Pressler, an artist, has supplemented the documentary material with her own acrylic and mixed-media paintings and pen-and-ink drawings. The exhibit will also include stories of other Oregon Jewish families who came to here by way of Shanghai.

The exhibit opens a remarkable window onto the hardships experienced by an often forgotten population of Jews, those who ended up in Shanghai because it was the only port at the time that had not yet entry- or transit visa requirements. The exhibit offers historical documentation (the journals are available at OJM in English translation) of the experience of displacement in a wholly foreign culture. Equally important, this exhibit also displays the cross-generational effects of persecution, emigration and struggle for existence as a Jew in the New World.