Posted on 12/04/2018 10:24:39 AM PST by SeekAndFind
As we pause to remember the Holocaust and mourn the six million Jewish lives it took, we should also commemorate those who attfleempted to save some of Hitler’s victims. While most of the world looked away and ignored the plight of Europe’s Jews, a small emerging country thousands of miles away resolved to rescue as many as possible.
The Philippines, a nation of some 7,000 islands in the South China Sea, was one of the few countries to open its doors to Jews fleeing the Holocaust.
The Philippine government was willing to grant more than 10,000 visas to Jews, and more than 1,300 Jews arrived in Manila before the Japanese invaded and occupied the country in 1942.
These were not, however, the first Jews to find a home there. The Philippine islands were a colony of Spain from 1521 to 1898, and a handful of Marranos and crypto-Jews are said to have escaped the Inquisition by fleeing to Manila during the early centuries of the Spanish colonial period. But it was during the late 19th century when people who were undisputedly Jewish are known to have arrived in Manila to establish homes and businesses.
Leopold Kahn and two friends known as “the Levy brothers” arrived in 1870 from Alsace, fleeing the Franco-Prussian War. Jewelers by profession, they established what was to become a Manila jewelry store known throughout the Philippines, called La Estrella del Norte.
They were soon joined by A.N. Hashim, a Syrian Jew who arrived a bit later with a stock of watches for sale, and also established a jewelry business in the Escolta, Manila’s premier business district during the colonial period.
The Spanish-American War in 1898 brought American Jews to the Philippines in significant numbers. Jews are said to have been well represented among the American armed forces, and they, like many Americans who were to later come, simply did not want to leave the Philippines when the time came to go home.
As the years passed and the Philippines became a securely held colony of the United States – under the benevolent if somewhat paternalistic rule of a series of American governors – these Jews were joined by Isaac Beck, who established Manila’s first department store, Emil Bachrach, said to have imported the first car into the Philippines while establishing the country’s first automobile dealership, and George Simmie and Nelson Thomas, who later established Manila’s first radio broadcasting station. Few Filipinos are aware that much of what they take for granted in their lives today had its origins in the freewheeling activities of these early American Jewish adventurers and entrepreneurs.
Over the next decade, the steadily growing number of Jews from the US was augmented by Russian Jews fleeing World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, as well as the Russian Civil War in the 1920s.
In 1924, a small but ornate Moorish- style synagogue was built on Manila’s William Howard Taft Avenue, named Temple Emil after Bachrach, by then immensely rich and a major philanthropist and chief benefactor of the growing Jewish community. The Jewish cemetery was consecrated the following year.
Soon after the inauguration of president Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, the US began to gradually prepare the Philippines for independence. In 1935, the status of the Philippines officially changed from colony to commonwealth, with an elected president and representatives.
Among the many aspects of administration that the US turned over to the new commonwealth government was the power to set its own immigration policies.
Thus, amidst the escalating persecution of European Jews, Philippine Commonwealth president Manuel Quezon announced that any Jew fleeing to the Philippines would be permitted to stay.
This was after more than 1,000 people had rallied in Manila, protesting the Nazi government’s treatment of the Jews. Ironically, while an antisemitic State Department was barring Jews from entering the US, its erstwhile Philippine colony resolved to admit them in the thousands – one of the few in the world to do so.
Speaking to interviewers a few years ago, Zenaida Quezon Avanceña, daughter of Manuel Quezon, commented on the world’s indifference to the plight of the Jews: “Other countries, perhaps, did not think it was important. I don’t presume to say. But I know that dad had the moral courage to do it because he believed in the sanctity of human life, and the right of people to live as they believed they should.
“It’s the right thing to do,” she recalled her father saying.
The dramatic rescue plan for the Jews was devised by three men who mapped out a strategy over weekend nights playing poker and smoking cigars: Quezon, who would sanction the Jews’ official entry and even donate his own land in the Manila suburb of Marikina for a Jewish community center; American high commissioner to the Philippines Paul McNutt, who risked his political career convincing US government officials to issue thousands of working visas for Jews to the Philippines; and Herbert Frieder, co-owner of the Philippine-based Helena Cigar and Cigarette Factory.
Also instrumental in making the rescue plan a reality was an ambitious young US army colonel, Dwight Eisenhower, then chief assistant to General Douglas MacArthur, who was serving Quezon as head of the Philippine Constabulary.
McNutt, who had been considering a run for the US presidency in 1940 and, some said, was banished to the Philippines by Roosevelt to keep him away from politics, called Jewish refugees “helpless and persecuted wanderers with no place to lay their heads.” Eisenhower wrote in his diary, “Hitler’s record with the Jews is as black as any barbarian of the Dark Ages.”
This is fascinating! Bump for later.
Great story ..thanks
..................
Not only have Filipinos been righteous and hospitable (and generally very good company), they have also been great immigrants in the US and Israel.
By objective measures like educational and income achievement, low rates of crime or welfare use, on average Filipinos are well above average. And they tend to be more fun as well.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.