Editor's Note: During the World War II, more than 30,000 Jews, under attack by the Nazis in Europe, fled to Shanghai, China and 16,000 of them took refugee in this city. Meanwhile, the local Shanghai people were also in an abyss of pain inflicted by the Japanese invasion.  Though the time was difficult, gratitude and mutual friendship lived on in the heart of the Jewish and Chinese people. The Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum and Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) launched a initiative early this year to present those touching stories in Chinese, English, German and Hebrew. This is one of the selected stories in the project to commemorate the history of Jews in Shanghai.

Two musician brothers from Cologne, Germany, taught many Chinese students when they took refuge in Shanghai. They’ve also recorded 30 albums in China, including the legendary “Rose, Rose, I Love You”, a famous Mandarin pop song which is also known outside China as "Shanghai Rose" and "China Rose."

he musician brothers are Otto Joachim, a violist and composer, and Walter Joachim, once the principal cellist of the M.S.O. In 1939, the brothers fled the Holocaust (like many other Jews of their time), and took refuge in Shanghai. After they settled down, the brothers opened a music studio and organized a band in Shanghai. They often played in a café on Avenue Joffre (now Huaihai Road) now remembered as DDS.

In Shanghai, the brothers had taught a lot of students, including Situ Zhiwen, one of the most famous Chinese cellists. As Situ Zhiwen recalled, one of the most unforgettable incidences was when they learned to play a Paganini sonata. They had no written music, so Otto Joachim borrowed a record and jotted down the written music while listening.

Life was hard for the Jewish refugees in the Hongkou Ghetto controlled by the Japanese military occupiers. Many of them made a living by doing some business on the street, so did the Joachim brothers. They were vendors during the day and musicians playing in cafes and ballrooms in the evening. A day’s work would last well into midnight. They’re satisfied, nevertheless, with life in Shanghai. “The concentration camps in Germany and Poland were real hell. It is unimaginable what would have happened to us if Shanghai had not opened its door to Jews. We’re indebted to Shanghai for our survival.”

The most important thing Otto Joachim had done in Shanghai was that he recorded 30 albums. In this course, he met with Chen Gexin, also known as Lin Mei, a Chinese pop song lyricist and composer, although he didn’t know the name of the Chinese musician. Chen sang tunes to Otto who recorded them and produced them in his albums. One of the songs was “Rose, Rose, I Love You”.

The song was first sung in ballrooms in Shanghai. After it became a hit in China, the Mandarin version was also reproduced in the US and UK in the early 1950s by Columbia Records. In 1945, an American composer translated the song into the English-language version which was first recorded by Frankie Laine in 1951. The song reached No. 3 position on the Billboard magazine music charts. It was so popular that people thought it was an American song.

“Rose, Rose, I Love You”, sometimes called “Shanghai Rose” or “China Rose” in the west for short, is still played and heard all over the world. It is telling the story of Jewish musicians in Shanghai and their connections with China. In some sense, they had brought Chinese pop music to the global audience.