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Entangled Histories pp 59–79Cite as

The Globalisation of Death: Foreign Cemeteries in a Transnational Perspective

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Abstract

Since the late nineteenth century, processes of globalisation have brought transgressive dynamics into almost every imaginable sphere of life. Objects, people, concepts and practices travelled worldwide and necessitated the standardization of issues of both health and death. The transboundary transport of corpses, however, remained problematic. An increasing number of foreign cemeteries testify to the effects of both migration and imperialism. In death, so it seems, we can find the ultimate metaphor for an eternal claim on space. With Harbin and its Jewish cemetery as an example, the question is whether the cemetery of a constantly migrating community in a place with multilayered borders can be read as a “freeze image” of global interferences, suitable for further research in these fields. In order to find out to what extent the Jewish cemetery has the quality of mirroring Harbin’s characteristic as a global crossroads until the end of World War II, the article retraces the activities of a Jewish international organization on migration on the basis of the papers of its leading figure, Meir Birman. Inconsistencies between the gravestones and the information on migration during World War II gained from the Birman papers explain the political value of a cemetery and its use as an ‘archive’.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Frederic Harrison, Realities and Ideals: social, political, literary and artistic (London: Macmillan, 1908), 164–5.

  2. 2.

    See Susan Gross Solomon, Lion Murard, and Patrick Zylberman eds., Shifting Boundaries of Public Health: Europe in the Twentieth Century (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2008).

  3. 3.

    Eidgenössisches Departement für auswärtige Angelegenheiten, “Arrangement international du 10 février 1937 concernant le transport des corps,” in Die Bundesbehörden der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft, 2010, accessed 27 March, 2010, http://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/de/home/topics/intla/intrea/dbstv/data10/e_19370010.html. Bilateral treaties regulating the reciprocal acceptance of passports for corpses between neighbour states started in the late nineteenth century. See Optobyte AG ed., “Vereinbarung zwischen der Schweiz und dem Deutschen Reiche über die gegenseitige Anerkennung von Leichenpässen,” in idem ed., Schweizer Gesetzestexte, 2010, accessed 27 March 2010, http://www.gesetze.ch/sr/0.818.691.36/0.818.691.36_000.htm, coming into effect 1 January 1910.

  4. 4.

    Before the end of World War II the treaty came into force in Belgium, Germany, Denmark, France, Italy, Mexico, Romania, Switzerland and Egypt.

  5. 5.

    As an example see Annexe II to the Convention for the rendition of Weihaiwei between the British and the Chinese Government, 18.4.1930, in Stephen A. Heald, “Great Britain and the Pacific”, Pacific Affairs 4,1 (1931), 32.

  6. 6.

    See Harbin Jewish Cemetery, http://www.zegk.uni-heidelberg.de/hist/ausstellungen/harbin/project.html

  7. 7.

    Xu Xin, “Jewish Diaspora in Modern China,” in Encyclopedia of Diasporas. Immigrants and Refugee Cultures around the World, ed. Melvin Ember, Carol R. Ember and Ian Skoggard (Springer Science + Business Media Inc., 2005), 152–64.

  8. 8.

    United Nations General Assembly, Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly 55/254, http://www.un-documents.net/a55r254.htm

  9. 9.

    United Nations General Assembly, Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly 217 (III). International Bill of Human Rights, http://www.un-documents.net/a3r217.htm

  10. 10.

    United Nations Economic and Social Council, Report of the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Asma Jahangir. http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/43f305ef0.html

  11. 11.

    As for instance in a legal report for the US congress on the destruction of cultural property in Cyprus. The Law Library of Congress, Report for Congress April 2009, File 2008–01356.

  12. 12.

    United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Elimination of all Forms of Religious Intolerance, Commission on Human Rights resolution 2003/54, http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/%28Symbol%29/E.CN.4.RES.2003.54.En?Opendocument

  13. 13.

    Philippe Ariès, The Hour of Our Death, trans. Helen Weaver, (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1981).

  14. 14.

    Douglas James Davies ed., Encyclopaedia of Cremation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). Brian Parsons, Committed to the Cleansing Flame: the development of cremation in nineteenth-century England (Reading: Spire Books, 2005). Norbert Fischer, Zwischen Trauer und Technik: Feuerbestattung, Krematorium, Flamarium: eine Kulturgeschichte (Berlin: NORA, 2002).

  15. 15.

    For the growing interest in the question of burials, the rituals of mourning, and cemeteries, see Jonathan Carl Jackson, “Reforming the Dead: the intersection of socialist merit and agnatic descent in a Chinese funeral home” (PhD. diss., University of California, 2008); Robin A. Hanson, “The National Cemetery: race and sectional reconciliation in a contested landscape” (PhD. diss., Saint Louis University, 2008); Chana Kraus-Friedberg, “‘Where you stay?’: transnational identity in sugar plantation worker cemeteries Pahala, Hawai'i” (PhD. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2008).

  16. 16.

    Ashish Chadha, “Ambivalent heritage: between affect and ideology in a colonial cemetery,” Journal of Material Culture 11,3 (2006), 347.

  17. 17.

    For example, Vere Langford Oliver ed., The Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies (Dorchester: Longman, 1927), or the famous Bengal Obituary, published in Calcutta in 1851 by Holmes and Co. For an overview, see Karl S. Guthke, Sprechende Steine: Eine Kulturgeschichte der Grabschrift (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006).

  18. 18.

    Adequate burial for prisoners of war is mentioned in the Hague Convention 1899/1907; the Geneva Conventions mention information and honourable interment. The question remained on the agenda of international conferences after World War I, e.g. for the British position at the Genoa Conference in 1922, the restoration clause not only mentioned the property of embassies but also of the cemeteries. See British Cabinet, Genoa Conference, Second Interim Report, British National Archives, CAB/24/133.

  19. 19.

    The German exile press gives an example of these data collections. The organisation of burial grounds and the listing of the names of the deceased were an important part of these journals. See, for example, The Jewish Voice of the Far East, published in Shanghai. For the list of exile journals see http://www.dnb.de/DE/DEA/Kataloge/Exilpresse/listeExilpressePeriodika.html, accessed May 26, 2013.

  20. 20.

    An 11-volume publication about Chinese graves in Australia, edited by Hu Jin Kok, systematically displays Chinese cemeteries in Australia, but also lists almost all Chinese graves in common cemeteries. Hu Jin Kok ed., Chinese Cemeteries in Australia, 11 vols. (Bendigo: Golden Dragon Museum, 2002–6).

  21. 21.

    Robert A. Bickers and Christian Henriot eds., New Frontiers: imperialism’s new communities in East Asia, 1842–1953 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).

  22. 22.

    Christopher A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: global connections and comparisons (Malden: Blackwell, 2009).

  23. 23.

    Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Beck, 2009).

  24. 24.

    Of course, foreign cemeteries in Asia are not limited to Christian and Jewish graves. Thomas H. Hahn mentions the Arab traders whose Islamic graves can be found in the old Chinese commercial city Yangzhou. See Thomas H. Hahn, “More on Foreign Cemeteries in China,” H-Asia, online posting accessed February 9, 2010, available by e-mail: H-ASIA@h-net.msu.edu

  25. 25.

    Chair of Modern History, Department of Modern History, ZEGK, University of Heidelberg, School of Western Studies, Heilongjiang University, Harbin, and Department of History, Achva College of Education, Israel ed., Harbin Jewish Cemetery, accessed March 28, 2010, http://www.zegk.uni-heidelberg.de/hist/ausstellungen/harbin/project.html. Cemeteries can be found in the Virtual Shanghai database (Christian Henriot, Virtual Shanghai: Shanghai urban space in time, accessed 28 March 2010, http://virtualshanghai.net/index.php), Jewish graves can be found in various databases, e.g. Shanghai Jewish Memorial ed., Shanghai Jewish Memorial, accessed 28 March 2010, http://www.shanghaijewishmemorial.com/index_1.htm, also on JewishGen ed., JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry, 2010, accessed 28 March 2010, http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Cemetery/. In addition, an increasing quantity of military cemeteries from different wars are presented online. One of the most extensive sources of biographical information on European cemeteries in South Asia, recording European cemeteries “wherever the East India Company set foot,” was provided by the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia, British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia: Home Page, 2005, accessed 28 March 2010, http://www.bacsa.org.uk. The Chinese Maritime Customs Project (University of Bristol) provides a searchable cemetery database. See Chinese Maritime Customs Project, Department of Historical Studies, University of Bristol, Search for a Person in our Union Cemetery Database, accessed 28 March 2010, http://www.bristol.ac.uk/history/customs/search.html. According to the Harbin city records, in 1958 Harbin still had four foreign residence cemeteries. The so-called United Cemetery provided space for different religions. I am grateful to Dan Ben-Canaan for this information.

  26. 26.

    See “Arrangements for the establishment of a foreign settlement at the port of Hiogo and Osacca”: “The Japanese government will form a cemetery for the use of all nations, at Hiogo, on the hill in the rear of the foreign settlement, and another at Osacca, at Zuikensan. The Japanese government will lay out the cemeteries and surround them with fences. The expense of maintaining and repairing the cemeteries will be borne by the foreign communities.” (in United States Department of State ed., Executive Documents Printed by Order of the House of Representatives, during the Second Session of the Fortieth Congress, 1867–’68, vol. 2 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1868), 40).

  27. 27.

    For example, “Legation of the United States to United States Consul, Peking 21 March 1866,” in Executive Documents Printed by Order of the House of Representatives, during the Second Session of the Thirty-Ninth Congress, 1866-’67, ed. United States Department of State, vol. 1 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1867), 510.

  28. 28.

    “Boxer Protocol, Peking, September 7, 1901.” For the list of cemeteries mentioned—in Peking, 1 British, 5 French and 1 Russian—see Foreign Relations of the United States, Affairs in China, Appendix, 325. A transcultural approach points to the fact that the same clause has a completely different meaning when the destruction and the reestablishment of graves have to be conducted by a state with ancestral worship.

  29. 29.

    Sacha Zala, “Jenseits des Revolutionsfestes: Anmerkungen zu D’Annunzios Fiume,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte und Kultur Südosteuropas 8 (2006), 73–84.

  30. 30.

    For this Commission and the complex difficulties of handling the different religions, see Alex King, “The Archive of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission,” History Workshop Journal 47 (1999), 253–9.

  31. 31.

    The construction of national military cemeteries started during the Civil War in 1862. Michael Sledge, Soldier Dead: how we recover, identify, bury, and honor our military fallen (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 33.

  32. 32.

    The question of European cemeteries in India was part of the British deliberations on Indian independence. See British cabinet, The White Paper on Indian Constitutional Reform, memorandum by the Secretary of State for India. British National Archives CAB/24/238. In this paper, European cemeteries remained a matter of federal decision making and therefore on the same level as military questions, while burials and burial grounds other than European cemeteries were solely provincial matters.

  33. 33.

    Rupert Brooke, The Soldier (1914).

  34. 34.

    For the development of the cremation movement, see Stephen Prothero, Purified by Fire: a history of cremation in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

  35. 35.

    Quincy L. Dowd, Funeral Management and Costs: a world-survey of burial and cremation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1921).

  36. 36.

    William Eassie, Cremation of the Dead: its history and bearings upon public health (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1875).

  37. 37.

    In Asia, Western cremation also influenced traditional mourning practices in a complex way. In the Chinese case, hygiene discourses, adaptation to Western modernity and the incompatibility of cremation with ancestral worship show transculturality as an area of conflict, especially in the case of governmental epidemics control, when cremation became an instrument of disease control. See Mark Gamsa, “The Epidemic of Pneumonic Plague in Manchuria 1910–1911,” Past and Present 190 (2006), 147–83.

  38. 38.

    When the Maharaja of Gwalior died in 1925, the British embassy tried in vain to organise an open air funeral pyre in Paris. However, the prince was cremated in a form which came as close as possible to the Indian rites (Anonymous, “Indian prince’s body cremated in Paris,” The New York Times, 7 June 1925, 5).

  39. 39.

    Anonymous, “Mixed rituals mark funeral,” Los Angeles Times, 19 July 1931, 13.

  40. 40.

    David Cesarani ed., Port Jews: Jewish communities in cosmopolitan maritime trading centres, 1550–1950 (London: Cass, 2002). Jonathan Goldstein, “Singapore, Manila, and Harbin as reference points for an Asian “Port Jewish” Identity,” accessed 3 April 2010, http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/harbin/Goldstein--Singapore,_Manila_and_Harbin.pdf

  41. 41.

    United States Department of State ed., Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States with the Annual Message of the President Transmitted to Congress December 6, 1910 (Washington: Government Printing Office 1910), 203 ff.

  42. 42.

    For the situation in Harbin during the Manchukuo period, see Dan Ben-Canaan, The Kaspe File, A Case Study of Harbin as an Intersection of Cultural and Ethnical Communities in Conflict 1932–1945 (Heilongjian: People’s Publishing House, 2009).

  43. 43.

    “Consul at Mudken to Secretary of State 28 September 1946,” in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946, ed. United States Department of State, vol. 10: The Far East: China (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1972), 1144–5.

  44. 44.

    “Ambassador in China to State Department, Nanking 10 December 1946,” in Foreign Relations, 1946, ed. United States Department of State, vol. 10, 1151. “Re-opening of consular posts in Manchuria; inability to open consulate at Harbin due to Communist obstruction,” in Foreign Relations, 1946, ed. United States Department of State, vol. 10, 1130–52.

  45. 45.

    Harbin City Local Records Editing Committee ed., Harbin City Records, On Foreign Affairs, Foreign Business, Trades and Tourism (Harbin 1998), 102–5. I am grateful to Professor Dan Ben-Canaan for making this material available in English translation.

  46. 46.

    Jonathan Goldstein, Jews in Harbin, in Encyclopedia of Jewish Diaspora: origins, ed. M. Avrum Ehrlich, vol. 3, ABC-CLIO, LLC, 1184.

  47. 47.

    Xin, “Jewish Diaspora in Modern China”, 158.

  48. 48.

    For an overview see Izabella Goikhman, Juden in China. Diskurse und ihre Kontextualisierung (Lit Verlag, 2007).

  49. 49.

    Harbin was an issue for the Japan-Soviet Society, which was involved in maintaining the commercial museum in Harbin. http://www.lonsea.de/pub/org/497

  50. 50.

    “Die Enquête der “Pariser Tageszeitung”: Wohin auswandern? Der Ferne Osten,” Pariser Tageszeitung, 28 April 1939.

  51. 51.

    “Die Enquête der “Pariser Tageszeitung”: Wohin auswandern? Der Ferne Osten,” Pariser Tageszeitung, 9 May 1939.

  52. 52.

    “25 Jahre Hicem in Ostasien. Aus einem Gespräch mit M. Birman,” Shanghai Jewish Chronicle, 19 May 1942.

  53. 53.

    Dr. A. I. Kaufman, M.M(iron). Grossmann, J(acob).W. Syskind (Ziskind), M(oshe).G. Simin (Zimin), M(ax).I. Heimann, I(oseph).M. Berkowitsch (Berkovitch) , Shanghai Jewish Chronicle, Sondernummer March 1940, 20.

  54. 54.

    Although more research is needed, this article presumes that the members of the Far Eastern Council came from well-established Harbin families. Graves with names potentially connected to the Far Eastern Council members can be found in the cases of Kaufman (or Kaufmann) and Berkovitch, while the identity is rather unlikely in the case of Grossmann (Grosman), and no matches can be found for Simin and Heimann, http://www.zegk.uni-heidelberg.de/hist/ausstellungen/harbin/project.html

  55. 55.

    See Reports of the Foreign Residents’ Propaganda and Education Group 69/3-6. I am grateful to Professor Dan Ben-Canaan for making this material available in English translation.

  56. 56.

    Based on the material available, the participating foreigners belonged to the (Russian) Orthodox and Catholic churches or to the Armenian church, and some were described as Jewish. In addition, a Soviet and a Polish foreign residents’ committee are mentioned (Reports of the Foreign Residents’ Propaganda and Education Group 69/3).

  57. 57.

    Harbin City Local Records Editing Committee, Harbin City Records, 105.

  58. 58.

    For a list of names, see The Jewish Community of China, “Biographies,” in Jewish Communities of China, 2008, accessed 31 March 2010, http://www.jewsofchina.org/JewsOfChina08/Templates/showpage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=302&FID=622. For the statistical data used in this contribution, see Chair of Modern History Heidelberg et al., Harbin Jewish Cemetery with many thanks to Manja Altenburg for making the data available.

  59. 59.

    Jonathan Goldstein ed., The Jews of China, vol. 1: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), 191.

  60. 60.

    The HICEM archives are part of the Meir Birman collection. See Meir Birman papers, RG 352, MKM 15.144-MKM 15.148 from the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research New York, henceforth quoted as YIVO Birman papers with the respective microfilm number.

  61. 61.

    The organisation consisted of 41 local organisations, which spent the money as required. During the war, substantial financial support came from JCA London and HIAS New York. See League of Nations, Handbook of International Organizations (Geneva 1939), 64.

  62. 62.

    As mentioned in a survey that was not signed, the organisation was well connected to non-Jewish international organisations, e.g. the League of Nations’ migration offices (Nansen Office), the American and International Red Cross, the Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children, the Zentralnachweisamt für Kriegsverluste und Kriegsgräber, with organisations in Moscow, in: 5–page historical abstract, undated and unsigned. YIVO Birman papers, Roll 1.

  63. 63.

    Daljewcib, Harbin, 28 January 1935, Report of the activities of our Organisation for 1934, YWO Birman papers Roll 1.

  64. 64.

    Harbin, Bericht für das Jahr 1935, Zahl der Neuangemeldeten, YWO Birman papers Roll 1.

  65. 65.

    Cash statement for January 1938, YWO Birman papers Roll 1.

  66. 66.

    Daljewcib, Harbin, Cash statement for December 1938, YWO Birman papers Roll 1.

  67. 67.

    Daljewcib, Harbin, Cash statement for January 1939, YWO Birman papers Roll 1. In April 1940, the office reported to Paris “we are overburdened with work” (Birman to HICEM Paris, 5, 5 April 1939), ibid. Ilse Stern left to Dairen in August 1939, (see Cash statement for August 1939). For staff in Shanghai, see No. 14, The Far Eastern Jewish Central Information Bureau, 18 December 1941, YWO Birman papers Roll 5.

  68. 68.

    Daljewcib, Harbin, Cash statement for February 1939, YWO Birman papers Roll 1.

  69. 69.

    Daljewcib, Harbin, Cash statement for May 1939, YWO Birman papers Roll 1.

  70. 70.

    Daljewcib, Harbin, Cash statement for July 1939, YWO Birman papers Roll 1.

  71. 71.

    Daljewcib, Harbin, Cash statement for September 1939, YWO Birman papers Roll 1.

  72. 72.

    Birman to HICEM Paris, 5 April 1939, YWO Birman papers Roll 1.

  73. 73.

    Ibid. 4: “It is difficult to foresee whether they will succeed in reaching the quota, and when, to which extent.”

  74. 74.

    Birman to W.L. Brand, 15 January, 1947, YWO Birman papers Roll 5.

  75. 75.

    R. Dyck, “Erster Bericht aus dem belagerten Shanghai. Gespräch mit dem HIAS-Direktor M. Birman,” Aufbau, XV (20), 20 May, 1949.

  76. 76.

    Single page of a letter addressed to HIAS Shanghai , 16 September 1949, signed I. Dijour, YWO Birman papers Roll 5.

  77. 77.

    See Time Line of the Jewish Community of Harbin, with many thanks to Dan Ben-Canaan for the biographical information.

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  1. Institute for European Global Studies, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Madeleine Herren

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Western Studies, Heilongjiang University, Harbin

    Dan Ben-Canaan

  2. Karl Jaspers Centre, Cluster "Asia and Europe in a Global Context", Heidelberg, Germany

    Frank Grüner

  3. German Historical Institute, Washington, District of Columbia, USA

    Ines Prodöhl

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Herren, M. (2014). The Globalisation of Death: Foreign Cemeteries in a Transnational Perspective. In: Ben-Canaan, D., Grüner, F., Prodöhl, I. (eds) Entangled Histories. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02048-8_5

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