Eva Hartwich

Of Blessed Memory 1921-2022

Eva Hartwich was born in Hanover, Germany where she lived with her family. After suffering through increasing levels of persecution throughout the 1930s, Eva’s family chose to leave Germany after Kristallnacht. They fled to Shanghai where Eva’s aunt and uncle had already established a home and a business. Shanghai was occupied by the Japanese and was the only place that would accept Jewish immigrants without a visa. In 1943 the Japanese interned Shanghai’s 17,000 Jewish refugees in a ghetto. Eva met and married her husband Werner in the ghetto. The Hartwiches were in Shanghai when the war ended and the Americans set up an army base there. The Americans helped Eva, Werner, and their young son to come to the United States in 1947, where they settled in Kansas City.