User:Jondel/Jews in the Philippines
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Philippines Saved German-Jewish Refugees by "Robert Cohen" <robtcohen@[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Feb 17, 2005 at 07:53 AM
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copyrighted by the ny times 2005
A Filipino-American Effort to Harbor Jews Is Honored By JOSEPH BERGER
Published: February 14, 2005
CINCINNATI, Feb. 12 - It was a time when Jews were frantic to get out of Germany, risking voyages to places they were not sure would accept them and finding doors closed almost everywhere.
In Manila, though, a vigorous expatriate cigar manufacturer from Cincinnati had been playing poker and bridge with the likes of Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower; Paul V. McNutt, the American high commissioner; and Manuel L. Quezon, the first Philippines president. When the manufacturer, Alex Frieder, saw refugees straggling to the port pleading for entry, he cajoled his poker cronies to let the Philippines become a haven for thousands more.
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Through his efforts and those of three of his brothers, about 1,200 German and Austrian Jews eventually found sanctuary in the Philippines in the late 1930's, then an American protectorate, even as the liner St. Louis was turned away from Miami with a boatload of 900 Jews in a more typical example of American policy.
Over the weekend, 98 of Mr. Frieder's relatives came together here with a half dozen refugees and a grandson of Mr. Quezon to celebrate this little-known tale of one of the war's unlikely rescues.
"They were the right persons in the right place at the right time," said Mr. Frieder's daughter, Alice Weston, 78, who was a young girl in Manila in 1938 and 1939 when her father and her uncle Philip Frieder masterminded the rescue. "My father wasn't an exceptional person. He was an ordinary businessman and he saw this horrible situation and he thought of a way to help a little bit."
Filipinos from the Cincinnati community serenaded the relatives with love songs in Tagalog as well as "Hava Nagila." Mrs. Weston, among others, sang along with the Tagalog lyrics she remembered from childhood. There were Filipino dishes like chicken adobo. Refugees led a Sabbath eve prayer service, and Manuel L. Quezon III, a 34-year-old journalist in the Philippines, introduced the blessing over the challah.
"We're a very hospitable people and we had experienced exile and imprisonment during the Spanish colonization and the early American occupation, so someone of my grandfather's generation would have been conscious of the plight of refugees," Mr. Quezon said. "We're a sucker for anyone who's suffering."
The reunion, organized by the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion here, was held on the 60th anniversary of the Japanese destruction of Manila's synagogue, Temple Emil.
The story of the Manila rescue begins in 1918 with the decision of the Frieder family to move much of its two-for-a-nickel cigar business from Manhattan to the Philippines, where production would be cheaper. Alex, Philip, Herbert and Morris took turns living in Manila for two years each, Mrs. Weston said, in a community that had fewer than 200 Jews.
Frank Ephraim, who as a child was one of the Jewish refugees in Manila and who wrote a history of the rescue, "Escape to Manila: From Nazi Tyranny to Japanese Terror" (University of Illinois Press, 2003), said that in 1937 Philip Frieder saw European Jews arriving in Manila's port from Shanghai while it was under siege by the Japanese. Shanghai remained an open port and eventually harbored 17,000 German Jews.
The Frieder brothers were reluctant to burden the Philippines with poor refugees, so they focused on importing people in occupations the country needed, like doctors. Mr. McNutt, the high commissioner, was able to finesse State Department bureaucrats to turn a blind eye to quotas and admit 1,000 Jews a year.
Mr. Quezon's approval was also needed. Dr. Racelle Weiman, the Holocaust center's director, said there was a letter written by Alex Frieder to Morris Frieder that said skeptics in Mr. Quezon's administration spoke of Jews as "Communists and schemers" bent on "controlling the world."
"He assured us that big or little, he raised hell with every one of those persons," Alex Frieder wrote of Mr. Quezon in August 1939. "He made them ashamed of themselves for being a victim of propaganda intended to further victimize an already persecuted people."
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A Filipino-American Effort to Harbor Jews Is Honored
Published: February 14, 2005
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Mr. Frieder combed lists of imperiled Jews for needed skills and advertised in German newspapers. The brothers and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee arranged visas, jobs and housing and raised thousands of dollars for sustenance.
Ralph J. Preiss, 74, of Manhattan, was 8 when he left Germany and recalled his family studying Spanish on the ship because they had read an outdated encyclopedia describing their intended haven as a colony of Spain. "We didn't know what the Philippines was or where it was," Mr. Preiss said.
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Eva S=FCsskind Ashner, 71, of the St. Louis area, was 5 when she took a train from Breslau in what was then Germany to Genoa, Italy, and from there sailed through the Suez Canal to Manila and its swampy heat.
"The first thing I remember is that we stayed in a boarding house and it was the first time I had to sleep with a mosquito net," Mrs. Ashner said. "It made a big impression on me."
Like most refugee children, she attended catechism in Roman Catholic schools. She even remembered crossing herself when saying her nighttime Hebrew prayer, "Shema Yisroel" (Hear, O Israel).
"My father put a stop to that in a hurry," she said.
Most refugees hoped the Philippines would be a way station to America, yet were delighted at the kindly reception from Filipinos. Doctors' organizations blocked refugees like Mr. Preiss's father from practicing on their own but tolerated Filipino supervision, and generally refugees carried on with old routines. Mrs. Ashner's mother made gefilte fish out of the local catch. Still, Lotte Cassel Hershfield of West Hartford, Conn., said some people, like her father, never adjusted.
The Japanese invaded after Pearl Harbor, ending the rescue. They treated refugees first as Germans, then as stateless, but did not intern them. "They had a dim view of German racial doctrines - they weren't Aryans," Mr. Ephraim said.
But their commandeering of food supplies forced refugees and Filipinos to survive on cracked wheat and coconut milk, Mrs. Hershfield said.
With pain in her voice, Mrs. Ashner remembered how after the Americans recaptured the Philippines in 1945, the retreating Japanese torched much of Manila. Her father, Bernhard S=FCsskind, returned to the burning city to rescue a nurse and was shot to death. Sixty-seven refugees were among the 100,000 people killed.
"To me, when you have an experience like this it doesn't leave you," she said, explaining why she came to the reunion. "It's always with you, and the people you went through it with are dear friends of yours."
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http://clarityandresolve.com/archives/2005/02/the_good_guys.php
http://www.lmtonline.com/news/archive/020705/pagea7.pdf#search='Jews%20Philippines'
CINCINNATI - As the Nazis took power in Germany and the world turned its back on Jewish refugees, four brothers who ran a cigar factory in the Philippines worked quietly to help 1,200 Jews flee to Manila.
The Frieder brothers never talked about their part in the little-known rescue. But some 65 years later, the remaining refugees want the world to know what Philip, Alex, Morris and Herbert Frieder achieved.
"The Frieder brothers were just ordinary Jewish businessmen, but they went out of their way to save lives," said Frank Ephraim, who was eight years old when his family fled to Manila from Germany in 1939. "No one made them do it. They just did what they thought was right."
The brothers from Cincinnati had taken turns going to Manila for two-year periods during the 1920s and '30s to run the Helena Cigar Factory, started by their father in 1918.
While they were there, they established a Jewish Refugee Committee and worked with highly placed friends — U.S. High Commissioner of the Philippines Paul V. McNutt and Manuel L. Quezon, the first Philippine president — to help the mostly German and Austrian refugees get passports and visas, then find employment and homes in Manila.
"We were welcomed in the Philippines at a time when the gates to Jews were closed all over the world," said refugee Lotte Hershfield, 74, of West Hartford, Conn.
friederbros.jpg
The Frieder brothers, from the left, Morris, Herbert, Philip, Henry, and Alex, shown in a family photo from 1935 in Cincinnati, operated a factory in the pre-World War II Philippines that helped rescue 1,200 Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe. A new permanent exhibit will be created at the Holocaust Center to honor their efforts. (AP Photo/Frieder family HO)
Now the brothers' photos, letters and other possessions, along with those of the refugees, will become part of a permanent exhibit in Cincinnati. Part of the exhibit might be taken to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, and to Manila.
"We want to tell the world about the humanity of these men who did so much to save so many people and were never recognized," said Racelle Weiman, director of the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education. "We hope it will make people realize that everyone can make a difference."
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From Al andaluz
[edit] Jews in the Philippines
Hi Jondel. I just read the message you left on my talk page. Yes, there was a mention of Jews in the Philippines in the Demographics of the Philippines article, but the entry was removed - along with other entries that cluttered the article with "statistics" of no demographic importance for a country with a population of 88 million people. But anyway, let's see if I can help.
The population of Jews in the Philippines today is at the very most 500 people. Estimates range between 100 and 500 people (0.000001% and 0.000005%). Manila boasts the largest Jewish community, though even here it consists of around 40 families, give or take a few. There are of course other Jews elsewhere in the country, but these are obviously fewer and almost all transients (diplomats or business envoys).
It is worth mentioning, however, that at their height, Jews living in the Philippines at one stage numbered around 10,000. The period in which most of these Jews arrived was under president Manuel L. Quezon, when he allowed them entry as persecution in Europe increased - which as we know, eventually lead to the Jewish Holocaust. Most of these, however, were also merely in transit. A good book on this specific topic is "Escape to Manila: From Nazi Tyranny to Japanese Terror". It narrates the story of the newly arrived Jews in the Philippines; from their day of their arrival, their daily life in Manila, to their departure to other destinations a decade later.
As you probably gather so far, almost the entire population of Jews in the Philippines were of Northern and Eastern European origin (Ashkenazim). Whatever number of Sephardim (Spanish Jews) there presently is in the Philippines is as a result of post-19th century arrivals from Morocco or Turkey. When the Sephardim fled from Spain in 1492 during the Inquisition, most fled to the areas that would become modern-day Morocco and Turkey, Portugal (that is, until the inquisition followed them there), the Netherlands and throughout the Americas.
Contrary to speculation, there is no historical evidence whatsoever to suggest any Sephardi made his/her/their way directly from Spain - or any of those who had fled to Hispanic America, or for this argument, specifically Mexico - to the Philippines on the Galleons during the Spanish Inquisition. In fact, the hypothesis is almost fictional. For those who had made it to any of the Spanish colonies in the Americas - anywhere from the modern Southwestern United States all the way down to Patagonia - once the inquisition reached them there (ie. those who weren't already tried and burnt at the stake by the franchise offices of the Inquisition in Spain's American colonies) most simply merged into their surrounding populations and eventually lost all connection with Judaism. The pockets of crypto-Jews around Latin America are the exception. In any case, they did not then migrate to the Philippines. Any migration that took place was from there to the Dutch posetions of Curaçao, Aruba, and New Amsterdam (modern-day New York, where they built the United States's first synagogue, and were that country's first Jews; preceeding the Ashkenazim.)
Getting back on track... The one and only synagogue in the country - the second ever built in the Philippines - is Manila's Beth Yaakov Synagogue. It was built in the 1980's. The only other synagogue which existed prior to the erection of Beth Yakoov was Temple Emil (built in the 1920's). Unfortunately, Temple Emil was destroyed by the Japanese during WWII.
[edit] Proper
The population of Jews in the Philippines as of 2005 is at the very most 500 people. Estimates range between 100 and 500 people (0.000001% and 0.000005%). Manila boasts the largest Jewish community, though even here it consists of around 40 families, give or take a few. There are of course other Jews elsewhere in the country, but these are obviously fewer and almost all transients (diplomats or business envoys).
At their height, Jews living in the Philippines at one stage numbered around 10,000. The period in which most of these Jews arrived was under president Manuel L. Quezon, when he allowed them entry as persecution in Europe increased which, eventually lead to the Jewish Holocaust.
Almost the entire population of Jews in the Philippines were of Northern and Eastern European origin (Ashkenazim).
The one and only synagogue in the country - the second ever built in the Philippines - is Manila's Beth Yaakov Synagogue at 110 HV De la Costa St., Salcedo Village, Makati (+632-8150265). The only other synagogue which existed prior to the erection of Beth Yakoov was Temple Emil (built in the 1920's). Unfortunately, Temple Emil was destroyed by the Japanese during WWII.
[edit] References
"Escape to Manila: From Nazi Tyranny to Japanese Terror". Narrates the story of the newly arrived Jews in the Philippines; from their day of their arrival, their daily life in Manila, to their departure to other destinations a decade later.
