The
Philippines saved Jews during the Holocaust
How the
Philippines saved 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust
By Madison Park, CNN
From 1937 to 1941, about 1,200 European Jews
found refuge from the Holocaust in the Philippines.
Their migration was part of an effort by the
Philippines president, Manuel Quezon, the Jewish-American Frieder family, and
an American official, Paul McNutt.
Several of the Jewish refugees pose with Mr.
and Mrs. Alex Frieder in this 1940 picture in the Philippines.
(CNN) Even at the
age of 7, Lotte Hershfield knew her world was crumbling.
She avoided
the benches with the sign: No dogs or Jews allowed. She couldn't attend public
schools. And the Nazis and their growling German shepherds raided her family's
house, throwing their books into a fire.
As a child, "we
were very aware," said Hershfield, now 84. Jews weren't welcome in
their own home.
Growing
increasingly fearful, her parents and her older brother left their hometown of
Breslau, Germany, in 1938 and journeyed to an unlikely new home -- the
Philippines.
About 1,200
European Jews fled to the Philippines from 1937 to 1941, escaping the throes of
the Nazis only to face another bloody war under Japanese occupation.
Many of the
Jews came from Austria and Germany, as the anti-Semitic policies including the
Nuremberg race laws intensified.
Unable to
immigrate to countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States,
thousands of Jews escaped to places such as Shanghai in China, Sousa in the
Dominican Republic and Manila.
Those who
arrived in Manila didn't realize that they had escaped the Holocaust only to be
caught in the war in the Eastern Front, where the Philippines came under
attack.
"We were
going from the frying pan to the fire," Hershfield said. "We went from Nazi persecutors to the
Japanese."
The
Philippines capital was liberated after a grueling, month-long campaign in the
Battle of Manila, one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, which now marks
its 70th anniversary.
From persecution to a welcome
This little known chapter of history about
Jewish refugees in the Philippines has inspired two documentaries and talk of a
possible movie.
"We know
about stories like Anne Frank, 'Schindler's List' -- the things that grab
popular imagination," said Michelle Ephraim, whose father, Frank
Ephraim escaped to the Philippines after Kristallnacht in 1938. "Once you bring an Asia element, it
becomes so complicated, interesting and surprising."
About 40 of
the Philippines refugees are alive today, according to documentary filmmakers.
They were children when they arrived in the Philippines over 70 years ago.
"That was
like a rebirth," said Noel Izon, the filmmaker of the
documentary, "An Open Door: Jewish
Rescue in the Philippines," in which he interviewed several Jewish
refugees. "They went from certain
death to this life."
Among them was Frank Ephraim, who arrived in Manila at
the age of eight. He recounted his experience in his biography, "Escape to Manila: From Nazi Tyranny to
Japanese Terror."
"My
father got a lot of positive attention, coming from a place where Jews were
exiled and treated so poorly," said his daughter, of his escape
from Europe. Frank Ephraim died in 2006.
"The
Filipinos were incredibly kind and treated him extremely well. There was an
element of something so redemptive."
How the Philippines became a haven
Manuel Quezon, the first president of the
Philippine Commonwealth, and a group of Americans that included future U.S.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Freiders, the Jewish-American brothers,
became increasingly concerned about the treatment of Jews in Europe during the
late 1930s.
"They had
a shared view of the world, they were men who understood what was happening in
Europe," said Russ Hodge, co-producer of the documentary
"Rescue in the Philippines."
That
documentary was screened in the Philippines with the country's president,
Benigno Aquino in attendance last year.
Over poker, the men devised a strategy to
bring Jewish refugees to the Philippines.
The Philippines Commonwealth remained under
U.S. supervision so it could not accept people who would need public
assistance. The refuge committee sought highly skilled professionals such as
doctors, mechanics and accountants.
By 1938, a stream of refugees arrived
including a rabbi, doctors, chemists and even a conductor, Herbert Zipper, who
survived Dachau concentration camp and later became the founder of the Manila
Symphony.
Quezon's ambitions to settle 10,000 Jews in
the southern island of Mindanao were dashed as the war arrived to the shores of
the Philippines.
A new home in the tropics
For the European Jews who arrived in the Philippines, "it was a cultural shock,"
said Hershfield. "We didn't know the
language. We had never seen any other than white people before."
The humidity
was thick, the heat overpowering and the mosquitoes gigantic.
But the young
Jewish refugees saw the Philippines as a new adventure. Children climbed mango
trees, swam in the bay and learned Filipino songs.
Hershfield became friends with local
neighbors, played sipa (a local kicking game) and relished tropical fruit such
as papaya and guava. Life in Manila was running around in sandals and summer
clothes. The experience differed for her parents.
"It was very difficult for my parents,"
she said. "They never really learned Tagalog. They had been westernized and
they stayed mostly within their circle of other immigrants."
Many of them lived in crowded community
housing where fights would break out. They had gone from being wealthy in
Germany to having nothing.
"It wasn't what they'd known before in
Germany," Izon said. "At the same time, they were able to
practice their religion, able to intermingle and have businesses."
Hershfield's idyllic days of playing under
the Manila sun came to an abrupt end as the war came ashore to the Philippines.
Japanese occupation
Starting in 1941, the Japanese occupied the Philippines. In some respects, the Jewish refugees were treated considerably better than Filipinos.
What
ironically protected the Jews was their German passports with the swastikas --
they were viewed as allies.
Ursula and
Martha Miodowski fled the Nazis through the Philiippines in 1939. Martha's
husband was Jewish, which meant that her daughter's life was also in danger.
"It
occurred to me later, that's what kept us from being interned," said Ursula
Miodowski, who was 7 years old at the time.
The Japanese
interned British and American residents in camps. Filipinos and American
soldiers were forced to march 65 miles in the infamous Bataan Death March in
which an estimated 10,000 prisoners died.
Japanese
officers confiscated residents' homes and also hoarded crops for its military.
The local economy shriveled and food became scarce.
Life under the
Japanese was hard and brutal, surviving refugees said.
When Allied
forces began taking back the Philippines, bombs fell daily. Families hid in
bomb shelters, not knowing where the next one would fall.
Frank Ephraim
spent days hiding in a ditch shaking, with a mattress covering his head. One of
Hershfield's friends died after stepping on a mine.
Manila burns following the bombing by the
Japanese forces, and the fires set when they left the city as American troops
recaptured it, as captured on February 27, 1945.
"Fires were going on all the time,"
said Hershfield. "You could see the black clouds, smell of bodies, lying there
and decaying."
As the Japanese were losing Manila, the
imperial troops launched a brutal urban campaign.
Rapes, torture, beheadings and bayoneting of
civilians were widely reported, so much so that a Japanese general Tomoyuki
Yamashita was later executed for having failed to control his troops.
"The Japanese decided to destroy Manila.
They were going to give them a dead city, they set about doing that," said Miodowski. "They burned, they killed."
But war time
in the Philippines was "preferable
to being in a concentration camp," she said.
The month-long urban street fighting for
Manila left the capital in ashes, decimating its economy and infrastructure.
The Philippines suffered nearly a million civilian deaths during the war.
Despite the trauma of facing both fronts of
the war, Hershfield remains grateful.
"We would not be alive today if not for
the Philippines. We would've been destroyed in the crematorium."
Refuge remembered
In 2009, a monument honoring the Philippines
was erected at the Holocaust Memorial Park in the Israeli city of Rishon
Lezion.
The monument,
shaped like three open doors, thanks the Filipino people and its president for
taking in Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.
Many of the
descendants of the Jewish refugees who fled to the Philippines have not
forgotten their family's place of refuge.
When Typhoon
Haiyan struck the Philippines in November 2013, the disaster brought in relief
workers from the American Jewish Distribution Committee.
Danny Pins,
who is related to Hershfield and is the son of a Jewish refugee to the
Philippines, headed its assessment team.
"For me
it was like coming full circle and I couldn't help but think of what it must
have been like when my grandparents and mother arrived 76 years ago," he said. "My going to the Philippines after
Typhoon Haiyan was very special. I was repaying a debt to the country that
saved my family."
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