A poor Jewish kid from Whitechapel became an important Chinese Diplomat 14/2/21
Morris (Moishe) Abraham Cohen (1887–1970)
Sarah Rich, his younger sister, lives in Manchester. He lived in the US, England, Canada and China. The CIA would not release information on him. He spoke English with a heavy cockney accent.
Jews lived in Radzanow, Poland which by the16C was a big wool processing centre.
1742 Czarina Elizabeth expelled all Jews from Russia and they had to live in what became the Pale
1881 Nicholas 1 frees the serfs
1882 A polish student named Hiniewicki a member of Noradnai Volia assassinated Nicholas 1 of Russia. A Jewish seamstress Jessie Helfmann belonged to this organization and was singled out as the architect of the deed and resulted in programs.
To get out of Russia you had to get an exit visa and so it was cheaper to cross over the border illegally. Many bought tickets to NY, that only got them as far as England.
1880s 908,959 people packed the East End. They founded Yiddish papers, drama societies and attended night school and played cricket. Maurice became a pickpocket -generally these were young kids, and learned the art of a con in the East End streets. The Jewish board of deputies struck a deal with the London Industrial School in Lewisham and paid for Jewish problem kids to go there, Later on with Rothschild help set up the Hayes Industrial boarding School where boys learned joinery , metalwork and tailoring as well as vegetable gardens. This was instead of them going to a reformatory. He also learned Shakespeare and graduated in 1905. Some graduates went home while others enlisted in the army. The English had the habit of sending away the children of the poor and orphans to work on farms or girls to work in small towns as domestics.
1868 to 1925 80,000 children were sent to Canada under the philanthropic org. of Dr Thomas Barnardo.
They went by ship from Liverpool up the St.Lawrence. At Quebec they were checked for trachoma and Morris Cohen was sent to a relative in Saskatchewan these colonies came about in 1867 and people were allocated plots of land
1881 Under PM John Macdonald Canadian Pacific connected the 2 coasts.
1880 Manitoba contained 30 Jewish families
Wapella in Saskatchewan had 28 Jewish families, locals objected to Jewish settlement. This included the future liquor magnate Samuel Bronfman. They started off with Sod homes. Maurice was collected by Joseph's friend but taken to work at Robert Nicholson farm where he worked hard, ate well and learned the art of dice, cards and pistols from a fellow worker. He did well but his cousin wanted him to work for him and after 4 days he left and got a job at a passing circus as a carnival barker,and the art of a con, making him feel back in Whitechapel and then the circus moved east.
Winipeg was the biggest grain handler, here he met Benjamin Zimmerman a cousin of Shalom Aleichem. He worked as a pimp and discovered he could buy rings marked 14 gold for a $ and sell them for $10 as if he was desperate for money.
The Chinese Regulation Act of 1884 put Federal head taxes on entering Chinese. The Triad Society was an organization bent on the overthrow of the Quing dynasty in China Gambling was one of the few ways Whites and Chinese mixed. In Alberta in gambling he made 2 good Chinese friends and picked up a bastardized Contonese, ate authentic Chinese dishes and heard old Mah tales of China. Maurice walked into Mahs shop when he was being mugged , hit the thief and took back the loot. Maurice was now taken into the Chinese Fraternity. Buagxu Emperor in 1898 announced plans to westernize China's economy but the Empress Dowager aunt Cixi thawted this.
For pickpocketing Cohen was sentenced to a year in Prince Albert jail in Saskatchewan.
Cohen was formally asked to join the Chinese lodge. He now worked for the National Land Company selling properties
1911 Sun Yat-sen travelled across Canada looking for support to fight against the Manchu Regime
1912SasKatchewan prohibited Chinese businesses from hiring white women to work for them. The press wrote a lot about China and Cohen was sought out for his thoughts on China, and the fabulous tale on Cohen's background in the press was encouraged by him.
1913 He helped in the naturalization of Chinese in Canada. Oil was found in Calgary.
1914 Canada was heading towards a depression and land sales came to a stop. At the start of the war Canada had 3110 soldiers and 300 sailors. Maurice joined the army 5% of which got a VD and he contracted Gonorrhea in London.
1915 Zeppelins dropped a hundred incendiaries on Whitechapel, so his family now had moved to Manchester Where he met them.
Maurice was in the transport corps who set up toy-like trains behind the trenches to bring supplies.
190,000 worked for the French and British armies in France Egypt Palestine , Mesoptainia also with Indians Egyptian and Fijians. At this time Cohen started working with the Chinese in 1918. Once Russia agreed to the Treaty of Brest Litovsk, Russian war labourers refused to work. 628,462 Canadians served in the armed forces and 60,661 died. Veteran Soldiers were offered 320 acres and loans of $15000.
It was not slow for the Canadian troops to return home as only the ports of Halifax and St. John were not icebound.
Munition workers lost jobs and wheat prices were low and farmers abandoned farms.
1920 Imperial Oil Ltd discovered oil on the Mackenzie River in the northern territories.
He became a member of the Chinese National League and Suns followers trained as pilots at the Ken Wah pilots school in Saskatoon, Canada.
1919 The west agreed on a Arms Embargo agreement against China. Cohen became an arms dealer and took on the name "5% Cohen". You had to grease palms to get to the inner leadership but through Cohen it was easy.
1921 Sun Yat-sen was elected president of the provisional government, he later stepped down for Yuan who appointed him director of the National Railways. Morris was involved in getting a Canadian contractor to complete the 252 Canton ,Hankou Railway in China and then he got a job as Sun Yat-sen's bodyguard. Most of Sun's entourage spoke English. Sun had been educated in Honolulu and Hong Kong
1925 Sun died of cancer and there is a mausoleum to him in Nanjing. 30 to 40% of China's trade came through Hong Kong.
1937 the Japanese invaded China and he joined the fight against them, later he was in Hong Kong when it was invaded and interned in Camp Stanley but got out in 1943 in a rare prisoner exchange.
1944 married Judith in a Montreal synagogue but they divorced in 1956 as he was always travelling.
Following the UN Special committee on Palestine recommendation, Morris Cohen flew to San Francisco and convinced the head of the Chinese delegation to abstain from voting when he learned they planned to oppose partition.
1949 Surprised how the Communist managed to do away with opium when they took control of China.
1959 the Dalai Lama had to flee Tibet.
His standing as a loyal aide to Sun Yat-sen helped him maintain good relations with both Kuomintang and Chinese Communists leaders. He was remembered as the loyal assistant to the father of modern China. He was not thrilled with Chang Kai- Shek and thought him corrupt
1959 . Rolls-Royse turned to Cohen to work as a consultant on China.
1961 China was a dreary place with the Great Leap forward with bad harvests, famines and cannibalism. With the American embargo period China never had enough grain so they bought from Argentina and Canada where he went on a commercial mission.
1962 He met Golda Meir, Israel Foreign Minister in Hong Kong who wanted to open a normal relation with China and he tried his best.
1967 Red Guards attacked the Soviet Mission in Beijing which had to be evacuated.
The US forced Israel to vote against China's entry to the UN, if Israel had not American Jewry might not have been able to send money to Israel. He also visited relatives in Cape Town.
He retired to his sister in Shelford and died in 1970 and was buried in the Manchester Jewish Cemetery. Both Communist and Taiwanese officials appeared together at his funeral Soong Qingling widow of Sun Yat-sen sent a Chinese inscription that was set on his stone with the English and Hebrew.
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