A collection of items donated by Jewish people to the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum will go on display for the first time later this year.

A marriage certificate of a young Jewish couple who tied the knot in Shanghai during WWII.

The museum has been collecting the artefacts since it opened in 2007, but has never before allowed the public to see them.

But in just a few months' time, possibly as early as this summer, visitors will be able to feast their eyes on 235 items provided by just some of the more than 20,000 Jews who lived in Shanghai's Hongkou District during WWII.

The items include official documents such as passports, marriage certificates and travel passes, as well as personal effects such as spectacles and pill boxes, museum curator Chen Jian told Shanghai Daily yesterday.

"Most were donated by people who lived in the city 70 years ago," he said.

They are currently stored at the Hongkou District Archives, he said.

When the museum, which is located inside the Ohel Moshe Synagogue in Hongkou, opened in 2007 it had only a few photographs and paintings, and a bit of film footage from the era.

"But it has always been popular with visitors from the Jewish community," Chen said.

Over the years, the curator said he has tried to build up a collection of items that reflects what life was like for Jewish people living in Shanghai at the time.

"While it was a dark period for people, there were good times, too," he said.

One of the first artefacts to be donated was a marriage certificate of a young Jewish couple who tied the knot in Shanghai during the war, Chen said.

"It's a reminder of a happy moment in the lives of two people," he said.

Among the other items set to go on show is a journal written by a pupil at a Jewish elementary school. It explains how youngsters studied mathematics and writing, but spent the bulk of their days learning the Jewish language.

Another artefact is a vinyl recording on which a Jewish man recounts how he and a school friend — a local child — used to speak to one another in a unique language that combined elements of Yiddish and the Shanghai dialect.

Chen said another item is an "access certificate" that Japanese soldiers used to record what each Jewish person bought from the market.

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