During the Second World War, thousands of Jews, fleeing persecution in Europe, were allowed to settle in China. Shanghai was the main destination, where 18,000 Jews lived alongside the local Chinese population.

Before World War Two, Evelyn Pike Rubin was a Jewish girl growing up in Germany. But then, in 1939, when she was just eight years old, she fled with her family to the only country that was open to them - China.

A Jewish woman who, along with her family, found shelter in Shanghai wants to ensure this remarkable story of survival is not forgotten. More than 75 years later and Evelyn Pike Rubin's memories are still incredibly strong.

Before World War Two, she was a Jewish girl growing up in Germany. But in 1939, when she was just eight years old, she fled with her family to the only country that was open to them — China.

"My feelings were it was going to be a great trip, I was going to go on a big ship, I'd never been on a ship — that's how kids think. But for my parents it must have been a terrible decision. We came to Shanghai thinking we'd be there a few weeks, maybe a few months. Not eight years. If anybody would have thought that we were going to be in Shanghai for years, I don't think people would even have tried to go," Pike Rubin said.

At the time, Shanghai was under Japanese occupation. The occupying forces declared the city open to refugees. As a result, 18,000 Jews, mainly from Europe, traveled to the city seeking refuge from the Nazis.

"So the community was there, and you did the best you could. My parents established a typewriter business. I was enrolled in a British school, the Shanghai Jewish school, it was a British school, I learned to speak English, I made a lot of friends. But the Chinese were very friendly to us, they were very, very nice. And I think they realized that we were being subjugated also," Pike Rubin said.

But it was a difficult time, especially for Evelyn's father, who had fought for Germany during the First World War and now felt betrayed by his country.

"I'm sure there must have been uncertainty because you're away from what used to be your home for centuries, so to speak, and here you were in a country you knew you weren't going to stay at but you also didn't know where you were going to go or when. But we felt safe, we felt very safe in Shanghai," Pike Rubin said.

But in 1943, four years after Evelyn and her family arrived in Shanghai, so did a Gestapo officer. Nazi Germany had finally found its way to China, where it asked the Japanese Vice Consul to deal with the Jews.

"He was asked to do away with us, approximately 18,000, it could have been 20,000, we never had an exact number. And said, put them on ships to sea without food or water, or just shoot them," Pike Rubin said.

Instead, the Japanese moved the Jews to a ghetto, but conditions there were far worse.

"That's when things got bad. There was no barbed wire, there were just guards at the entrance to the ghetto and people were starving. There wasn't enough food around, you know, you had to make a living. So my mother and I with three other families, we bought a slum house in Hongqu, we had a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny room and it became very difficult," Pike Rubin said.

It was not until 1947, two years after the end of the war, that they were finally granted visas to travel to the United States.

Since emigrating to America, Evelyn has written a book about her journey to China and her years there in hopes of spreading the stories of Holocaust survivors.

She has also returned to Shanghai twice. In 1993, when she visited the house she lived in, and in 2006, for a reunion.

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