(25)
INT. LIVING ROOM -- ANNA'S HOUSE -- DAY
SUPEROVER: FEBRUARY 18, 1943
Anna adjusts the radio. The news reporter's voice becomes loud and clear. Mark stops pacing the room and Emilia stops knitting, listening.
NEWS REPORTER (O.S.)
On February 18, Japanese authorities order all the Jewish refugees to live in a restricted area of Hongkow. Those who live outside the boundaries of the area are enforced to move into the restricted area within three months. Jewish refugees who do not obey will be severely punished. Male Jews will be arrested on sight, without leniency, if found outside of Hongkow without permission.
Hans and Dr. Behr enter and show a leaflet to Anna and her parents. Anna takes the leaflet and reads it.
HANS
Look at it, read it. We've just torn it off a post in the street.
DR. BEHR
Such decrees are now pasted everywhere in Shanghai.
HANS
All Jews are ordered to be moved into a restricted area. We're gonna be herded back to Hongkow.
ANNA
We've just heard the news broadcast. We're wondering if it's a rumor. Now, apparently, it's true.
EMILIA
It's horrible. It reminds me of the Nazi proclamations in Germany.
MARK
Damned. The Germans have urged and made an impact on the Japs to torture us. The ghetto in Hongkow is as bad as a hell.
DR. BEHR
The ghetto in Hongkow is to be a guarded enclosure, restricted and regulated.
HANS
Hongkow is so cramped with thousands of Chinese already living there. How can we, more than 17,000 Jews, squeeze in?
DR. BEHR
(agitated)
No, we cannot squeeze in. I won't leave my wife and son, and I won't let them be pent up in the ghetto.
HANS
We don't know what kind of punishment we'll face if we don't comply.
DR. BEHR
Mina isn't Jewish. There may be some way of exemption.
HANS
I hope you're right.
EMILIA
Is anything said about how to find housing inside the ghetto limits?
HANS
No, nothing. We have to search for exchange of dwellings available.
ANNA
The move shall be completed within three months. It's so urgent to find a proper place to be relocated.
MARK
We're reduced to despair. Hongkow is a poor section in Shanghai, and, and the ghetto area is even poorer.
EXT. STREETS -- JEWISH GHETTO -- HONGKOW -- DAY
At the entrance of the ghetto, several Japanese soldiers stand guard, carrying rifles with bayonets and barking rough commands to the Jewish refugees who trudge along, burdened with their heavy luggage, to seek shelters in some ramshackle shacks.
Trucks and cars, loaded with furniture, bags, suitcases and trunks, drive past the rubble streets or come to a halt by dilapidated buildings.
Jacob pulls over a truck in front of a row of squalor tenements. Rose jumps out of the truck and begins moving her bundles of belongings into a dingy house. Catalina and Petr stay in the passenger's seats, listless and dismayed.
INT. HOUSE IN GHETTO -- DAY
Jacob looks around the cramped house with a common kitchen and a toilet with no running water.
JACOB
What a musty room. The ventilation is too bad.
ROSE
So many families share the common kitchen.
JACOB
The toilet facility, without running water, is horrible.
ROSE
Hongkow is a bad place on the whole, even worse is the area within the ghetto borders.
EXT. HOUSE IN GHETTO -- DAY
Anna and her parents walk about, searching for a place to live. They approach Rose's truck.
ROSE
Anna, have you found a place to live?
ANNA
Not yet. It looks dirty and rundown everywhere.
EMILIA
How can we live in such squalor?
JACOB
You have no choice. At least the Japs don't drive you into concentration camps.
MARK
Oh, damn it. Whom the hell do the Japs think they are? Let's just stay where we are and pray that we're not found. There are too many Jews for them to go door to door policing us.
(CONTINUING)
