Sir Eleazer "Elly" Silas Kadoorie (1867 – February 8, 1944) was a Baghdadi-born

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

businessman and philanthropist active in

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

and

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

. He was a member of the wealthy

Kadoorie family The Kadoorie family or "Khedouri" ( he, כדורי, ar, خضوري) are a wealthy Hong Kong-based family, originally Mizrahi Jews from Baghdad, Iraq. From the mid-18th century they were established in Mumbai, British Raj India becoming one of t ...

that had large business interests in the Far East.

Biography

His family were originally

Iraqi Jews The history of the Jews in Iraq ( he, יְהוּדִים בָּבְלִים, ', ; ar, اليهود العراقيون, ) is documented from the time of the Babylonian captivity c. 586 BC. Iraqi Jews constitute one of the world's oldest and mos ...

from

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...

who later migrated to

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

(

British Raj The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was himsel ...

), in the mid-nineteenth century. His brother was Sir

Ellis Kadoorie Sir Ellis Kadoorie CBE (1865–1922) was a Jewish entrepreneur and philanthropist. He was a member of the wealthy Baghdadian Kadoorie family that had large business interests in the Far East. His brother was Sir Elly Kadoorie, and his nephew wa ...

, and his sons were Sir Lawrence Kadoorie and Sir

Horace Kadoorie Sir Horace Kadoorie, CBE (28 September 1902 – 22 April 1995) was an industrialist, hotelier, and philanthropist. Early life and education In 1913–14, he spent a year at Clifton College and was a member of Polacks House; a boarding house so ...

. Elly Kadoorie arrived in

from Bombay in 1880 as an employee of the

Baghdadi Jewish The former communities of Jewish migrants and their descendants from Baghdad and elsewhere in the Middle East are traditionally called Baghdadi Jews or Iraqi Jews. They settled primarily in the ports and along the trade routes around the Indian ...

firm David Sassoon & Sons.Haaretz: "This Day in Jewish History: A WWII Survivor Who Built Hong Kong Dies – Lawrence Kadoorie rose from a Japanese prison camp to restore his family’s fortunes and help forge Hong Kong’s future with China" by David B. Green
25 August 2014 Within a few years he had accumulated large sums of money and had gone into business on his own account, with companies in both Shanghai and

. He became the largest shareholder when China Light & Power was restructured in early 20th century. Over the next two decades, the Kadoorie brothers made their fortunes, achieving success in banking, rubber plantations, electric power utilities and real estate and gaining a major shareholding in Hong Kong Hotels Limited. Kadoorie was made an Honorary Knight Commander of the

Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established ...

in the 1926 Birthday Honours. He was given the Order of the Brilliant Jade by the Chinese government. He became a naturalised British citizen the following year. In 1942, Kadoorie was taken from his home in Shanghai and interned in a Japanese prison camp for foreign civilians. He died in prison on February 8, 1944. Sir Elly Kadoorie's grave and that of his wife Laura, Lady Kadoorie, are located in the Song Qingling Memorial Park near Hongqiao Road, Shanghai, and are accessible to visitors. Theirs are amongst only four Jewish tombstones in Shanghai which remained intact and were not destroyed during the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goal ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kadoorie, Elly 1867 births 1944 deaths Hong Kong philanthropists Hong Kong Jews Hong Kong people of Iraqi-Jewish descent Baghdadi Jews Elly Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Jews and Judaism in Shanghai Jewish philanthropists Businesspeople from Mumbai British people who died in Japanese internment camps Businesspeople from Shanghai Chinese Zionists Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom