Following the November pogrom of 1938, the situation of the Jewish population worsened dramatically, and the majority of Hamburg's Jews left their hometown. James Iwan Wolf (1893-1981), son of Leopold Wolf and a member of the famous Wolf Brothers, was one of about 500 to 700 Jewish emigrants from Hamburg who fled to Shanghai. After the Hongkew district had been turned into a Jewish ghetto in 1943, the Shanghai office in charge of stateless refugees – a Japanese military authority responsible for supervising and controlling a total of between 20,000 and 30,000 Jewish refugees from Europe – issued James Iwan Wolf's pass on June 2, 1944. Printed in Japanese, Chinese, English, and German, the document points to the various international powers' spheres of influence in the port city of Shanghai. While James Iwan and his brother Donat Wolf (1902-1984) continued to perform on stage in Shanghai under the name Wolf Brothers, his pass shows that he made his living by repairing typewriters. It also included a permit, which was renewed monthly and contained specific information on the times when its bearer was allowed to leave the closed off Hongkew district and enter certain other districts. Thus James Iwan Wolf was repeatedly subjected to the arbitrary decisions of Japanese officials who decided on the renewal of his passport.