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Jewish Migration in the Philippines

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 Maria Pilar M. Lorenzo

Jewish Migration in the Philippines

Jewish Migration during Spanish Era
The intertwined history of the Jews and the Filipinos began as early as the Spanish era
in the Philippines.1 Documents trace it to the time of the Spanish Inquisition in the
16th century when the Jews living at that time in Spain were forced to convert to
Christianity. To escape from this menace, these “New Christians,” “Marranos,” or
“Crypto-Jews,” together with the Spanish adventurers who sailed to their conquered
­islands, travelled as far as the far eastern ports including Manila (Philippines). Almost
three centuries later, there was the arrival of Alsatian Jews, particularly the three Levy
brothers. These brothers were entrepreneurs from Alsace-Lorraine who happened to
­escape the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 (Hoffman; “History of the
Jews in the Philippines;” Scheib). Eventually, the Suez Canal was opened in March
1879, and this paved the way for greater trade relations between Europe and the
­Philippines. With this enhanced business situation, the Jewish migration consequently
expanded. Turkish, Syrian, and Egyptian Jews later came as well, and so at the end of
Spanish era, there were about fifty Jews in the Philippines (“History of the Jews in the
Philippines”).

Jewish Migration during American Era

The more massive arrival of Jews in the Philippines happened during the American pe-
riod. Many of these American Jews who came were military men, teachers, and busi-
nessmen. The American-Jewish soldiers were part of the American military deployed to
the Philippines, and some of them decided to remain in the country even after their
military discharge. An increased number of American-Jewish businessmen also came,
optimizing the new market that they could tap (History of the Jews in the Philippi-
nes). The Philippines also became a haven for Russian Jews during the time of the
Bolshevik Revolution (Hoffman).
The last stage of Jewish migration to the Philippines came during the years
1937–1941 due to the persecution against the Jews wrought upon by the Nazis
­(Pitogo). Most of these Jews were from Austria and Germany, where the anti-Semitic
policies were very intense. It was during the late 1930s when many countries declined
to receive Jewish refugees, and among them were the United States and Canada. As the
Jews could not go to their first choice of country of refuge, many of them went instead
to other cities like Shanghai (China), Sousa (Dominican Republic), and Manila (the
Philippines) (Park).

1 Spanish era in the Philippines spanned from 1521–1898.

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Conscious Effort to Help the Fleeing Jews

The organized assistance extended to the Jews started out one night when these promi-
nent people were playing poker: American High Commissioner for the Philippines
and former governor of Indiana Paul McNutt, Army Colonel and future U.S. Presi-
dent Dwight D. Eisenhower, four Freider Jewish-American brothers, and Philippine
President Manuel L. Quezon. The American officers and the Jewish-American entre-
preneurs were discussing with the Philippine President the state of the persecuted Jews
in Europe. As pointed out by Mr. Russ Hodge, a co-producer of the documentary
­Rescue in the Philippines, these men shared the same understanding and sentiment
about the plight of the Jews, and so they made a plan to make the Philippines a place
that the persecuted Jews could go to (Pitogo; Rodis).
As the Philippines was still under the supervision of the United States of America
at that time, the country was not in a position to accept people who were in need of
public ­assistance. They were able to bring in refugees by using the reasoning of having
the need of highly skilled professionals like doctors and accountants (Park). The Jewish
­refugees who came to the Philippines numbered between 1,200 and 1,300. With this
number, it is said that the Freider brothers, Pres. Quezon, High Commissioner
McNutt, and Colonel Eisenhower could have helped more Jews than Schindler did
(Lapeña).
The Freider brothers – Alex, Philip, Herbert and Morris – were successful Jewish-
American businessmen in the Philippines. In 1918, they transferred their two-for-a-
nickel cigar business from Manhattan to Manila, where they could have lower produc-
tion costs. At the peak of their tobacco business in Manila, their company would pro-
duce 250 million cigars every year (Rodis). The name of their business was Helena
Cigar Factory (Flores). It was Philip Frieder who witnessed the arrival of Jews in
Manila’s port from Shanghai. He, together with his brothers, decided to seek help
from their high-profile poker companions mentioned above: namely McNutt, Eisen-
hower, and Quezon (Flores). According to the account given by one of the daughters,
Ms. Alice Frieder Weston, her father raised money to be able to bring in the Jews to
the Philippines. There were around 1,200 refugees who came over at that time (Rodis).
President Manuel L. Quezon, who headed the Philippine Commonwealth at that
time, was described by one of his daughters as “a man who had a great deal of respect
for human life, and he felt that what was happening there was a great injustice, and he
couldn’t understand why more countries would not open their doors to the Jews”
(“Rescue in the Philippines Interviews”). His decision to rescue the Jews could have
­rocked socio-political events at that time; this decision turned out to be unpopular
with the U.S. State Department. Even among his fellow Filipino government officials,
assisting the Jews was not a favored move. He still had to convince his own cabinet
members and the elected politicians from the opposition, which was headed by Emilio
Aguinaldo, the first Philippine President.
Fired up by his moral courage, President Quezon believed in the Filipinos’ respon-
sibility in helping the Jews, and so he stood up for it regardless of the costs (Rescue in

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the Philippines Interviews). Therefore, he decided to enact the Open Door Policy that
welcomed the fleeing Jews from Europe. The Washington Times reported in an article
entitled “Quezon Urges Jews’ Haven” on December 5, 1938 that President Quezon
r­emarked: “I am willing to facilitate entrance of such numbers of Jewish people as
we could absorb […] I favor large scale immigration to Mindanao2, if well financed”
(Rodis).
As such, between 1,200 and 1,300 European Jews fled to the Philippines, although
there were officially 10,000 visas granted to the Jews (Lapeña; Park). In 1939, Presi-
dent Quezon built a housing community in the city of Marikina, and he also planned
for a farm and a settlement area in the region of Mindanao – all these were made spe-
cifically for the refugees (Pitogo; “History of the Jews in the Philippines”).
The US High Commissioner and former governor of Indiana, Paul McNutt, is also
credited with rescuing the Jews. Due to his position, he was the one tasked to convince
the US State Department to provide the visas (Rodis). In an interview with Ms. Jane
Frieder Ellis, she described that: “The State Department wasn’t very nice in those days.
I mean this never could have been without McNutt, and I think he gambled his whole
political career on doing this. A great deal of credit needs to go to him” (“Rescue in
the Philippines Interviews”). Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower on his part was assigned
to craft a plan how to bring the Jews to Mindanao, the southernmost region of the
Philippines.
Apart from the abovementioned prominent officials, there were other Filipinos who
publicly opposed Kristallnacht. In the research that was made by Dr. Weiman, Jorge
Bocobo (Flores), then the president of the University of the Philippines, delivered a
speech condemning the Jewish persecution. Together with other Filipinos, they funded
the Committee for Racial and Religious Tolerance. They mobilized protests, such as
the rally they staged on November 19, 1939 at the Ateneo, which at that time was still
located in Intramuros, Manila. The demonstration was led by Quintin Paredes, and
­attended by more than a thousand people (Flores).
When the strategy was implemented, Jews started to pour in by 1939. As planned,
they were brought to the Philippines as professionals who could lend their technical
expertise. Specifically, they were rabbis, chemists, and doctors. One of them, Herbert
Zipper, was a conductor who survived the concentration camp in Dachau, and when
he came to the Philippines he founded the Manila Symphony (Park).

Life in Manila
It was indeed a cultural shock in many ways for the refugees upon reaching the
­Philippine shore. The country turned out to be very different from the environment
that they grew up in. There were drastic differences such as temperature, humidity,
­language, and people. For instance, a Jewish refugee by the name of Lotte Cassel (now

2
The Philippines has three major islands – Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.

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known as Hershfield) was shocked upon arriving in the Philippines as she did not know
the language, and that she had not seen any other citizen apart from white people. She
also complained of the thick humidity, scorching heat, and large mosquitoes (Park).
However, in spite of all these, the young refugees saw the Philippines as a new
­adventure, having learned how to climb up the mango trees, swim in the seas, learn
­Filipino songs, play local games (such as sipa, a local kicking game), and eat tropical
fruits (like papaya and guava) (Park; Pitogo). There was never a ghetto in Manila; both
Jews and Filipinos lived near to one another, and they both shared their culture with
one another (Contreras).
The adjustment proved to be more difficult for the adults. Many of them came
from prominent and wealthy families back in Austria and Germany. When they trans-
ferred to Manila, most of them interacted only with their fellow immigrants. The con-
solation that they got was that they were able to practice their religion and profession
(Park; Pitogo).
Preiss, a Jewish refugee from Rosenberg, Germany, who came to Manila on March
23, 1939, recounted the synagogue-run soup kitchen along Taft Avenue in Manila. It
served hot meals to the refugees. He is now a retired engineer living in the United
­States (Contreras). Max Weissler, another migrant, arrived in Pasay City (another city
in Metro Manila) when he was eleven. His mother baked cakes that would be peddled
by his father. The two were grateful to the Filipinos for opening their borders to per­
secuted Jews. In the words of Weissler, Filipinos “have an open heart.” (Contreras).
For the author Frank Ephraim, Filipinos were a tolerant people who never inter­
fered or took any action against the Jews. Their temple on Taft Avenue was very
­visible, and Jews attended services and congregated in front of the temple without the
slightest disturbance (Contreras; Ephraim). Author Ephraim also mentions in his book
that “The Philippines held out a promise of a safe haven from Nazi oppression, offe-
ring survival from mass murder of the Jewish people in Europe” (10).
In general, the Jews in Manila had freedom, marked with peace. This freedom
to them can be glimpsed through on how even some of them became prosperous. For
instance, they owned some of the first modern department stores, auto­mobile dealer-
ship, embroidery, clothing and tobacco industries, and commercial radio station in the
city (Hoffman).

Japanese Occupation
Despite of the plan to provide a safe haven to the Jews, this intention was not spared
from scathing events. Immediately after the Open Door Policy was enacted, the
­Japanese Invasion transpired (Rescue in the Philippines Interviews). And so the people
who escaped the harrowing event of the Holocaust found themselves in another
dire situation − the Japanese occupation. Lotte Hershfield, one of the survivors, says:
“We were going from the frying pan to the fire. We went from Nazi persecutors to the
Japanese.” (Park). The plan of President Quezon to construct a settlement area for the

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Jews in the Mindanao region never came into fruition as the Philippines was devasta-
ted by yet another war.
On December 7, 1941, the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, which is within the
territory of Hawaii, was bombed by Japan. A day after this, the Japanese invaded the
Philippines. They were able to capture Manila, the capital of the country, within a
month. The Japanese occupation is described as something short-lived but unfor­
gettable, as it proved to be very abusive and brutal. For instance, 75,000 Filipino and
American soldiers were forced to march 65 miles from Mariveles, Bataan to San Fern-
ando, Pampanga. Along the march, thousands of soldiers died due to starvation, heat,
and beating (“Bataan Death March”). The Japanese invasion of the Philippines turned
out to be devastating for the latter, as bombs were being dropped daily. After the war,
Manila emerged as the second most devastated city, next to Warsaw (Jose). At the end
of the Japanese occupation, there were 100,000 Filipino civilians documented as dead
(Hoffman).
It is at this time in Philippine history that the Jewish refugees found themselves in
this tropical country. Their German roots benefitted them since their German
passports carrying the swastika sign made the Japanese consider them their allies.
Hence, the Jews were treated much better than Filipino citizens (Park). Nevertheless,
they could not be spared from an uncertain fate because the bombings still occurred.
Even if families were hiding in bomb shelters, they were far from being safe. Fire, black
clouds, and dead bodies were daily occurrences at that time. Cases of rape, torture,
­beheadings and bayoneting of civilians abounded. In spite of this harsh environment
during the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, one of the survivors, Ursula Mio­
dowski, remarks that the Philippines was still preferable than the concentration camp
(Park). Most of the Jews in the Philippines survived the war. However, the number of
Jews who stayed in the country diminished from 800 to around 300 in 1950s. Those
who stayed were mostly businessmen and academics (“Philippine Jewish Commu­
nity”).

Documentation of the Jewish Migration in the Philippines

The assistance extended by the Philippines to the Jews is relatively unknown. A Philip-
pine historian, Dr. Ricardo Trota Jose of the University of the Philippines, laments the
fact that the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. fails to recognize the humani­
tarian aid given by the Philippines to the Jewish refugees. In an interview granted to
the Rescue in the Philippines, he says: “My first visit to the Holocaust museum in
­Washington D.C., I remember I was very disappointed personally when I looked at
the list of countries that helped the Jews and the Philippines wasn’t there” (Rescue in
the Philippines Interviews). Max Weissler, a survivor, shares the same sentiment. At
the program in the inauguration of the Open Doors monument in the Holocaust
­Memorial Park, he said that there is little known about the Jewish migration in the
Philippines among Israelis and Filipinos (Contreras).

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 34

One of the major events that brought this untold story into the light was Frank
Ephraim’s own account as a refugee in Manila in a book entitled Escape to Manila:
From Nazi Tyranny to Japanese Terror, published by the University of Illinois Press in
2003. Ephraim was born in Berlin, Germany in 1931, and together with his parents
had to seek refuge in the Philippines in 1939 when he was eight years old (Contreras).
He then emigrated to the United States of America in 1946 and there he made a career
in engineering. The Philippine government conferred upon him the Order of Lakan-
dula (rank of a Commander) in recognition of his work (“The Center for Holocaust &
Humanity Education”).
The first documentary made about Jewish-Filipino relations during the Holocaust
period was the Rescue in the Philippines: Refuge from the Holocaust. The documentary
runs for one hour and recounts the story of the four Frieder brothers, originally
­Cincinnati businessmen, who greatly helped Holocaust victims with the assistance of
Philippine and American statesmen like President Quezon, U.S. High Commissioner
Paul McNutt and Army Colonel Dwight Eisenhower (“Rescue in the Philippines”).
Another documentary followed, entitled An Open Door: Jewish Rescue in the
­Philippines, produced and directed by a Washington DC-based and award-winning
filmmaker Noel “Sonny” M. Izon, and co-produced by author Sharon Delmendo
­(Rodis). This feature-length documentary was the third of the director’s World War II
trilogy of Forgotten Stories (Rodis; “An Open Door Jewish Rescue in the Philippines”).
The making of this documentary was to show the filmmaker’s gratitude towards Jews.
There was a time that the director’s father was confined in a Manila hospital, and the
doctor who attended to him was Dr. Otto Zelezny, one of the twelve Jewish physicians
among the 1,300 Jews who came to the Philippines during the Nazi regime. The direc-
tor sought to showcase significant historical events such as the Nuremberg Laws on
September 15, 1935 and the inauguration of the Philippines as a Commonwealth of
the United States two months later. Director Izon began making the documentary in
2011, and the film was released in 2013.
Given this untold history of the Philippines, the Filipino-American researcher and
scholar Sharon Delmendo, professor at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New
York, has been an advocate in spreading this news about the help that the Philippines
extended to the Jews. This is also a good way to expand the usual Philippine history
books that are normally permeated only with stories of colonization and oppression.
Delmendo says: “I think it’s very important for this to be known here. For one thing,
it is because it’s a chapter of Philippine history in which the Filipinos are the heroes”
(Quismundo).

Commemorating the Help

In 2009, Jews decided to honor the Philippines by erecting a monument at the Holo-
caust Memorial Park in Rishon Lezion, located south of Tel Aviv. The monument has
the shape of three open doors to commemorate the Open Door Policy that President

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 35

Quezon implemented. The project was executed thanks to the Philippine Ambassador
to Israel Antonio Modena and Rishon Lezion Mayor Meir Nitzan. The Ambassador
gave a speech in 2005 in the Rotary Club of Jerusalem and thereby launched the cam-
paign for this project. It was said that he was inspired by the book Escape to Manila:
From Nazi Tyranny to Japanese Terror, written by Frank Ephraim (Contreras).

Present Philippine-Israeli Relations

As a demonstration of their gratitude, Israel has been generous in sending humani­
tarian aid to the Philippines in times of the latter’s disasters. With regard to Typhoon
Ketsana in 2009, Israel sent a search and rescue unit and a medical team of six volun-
teer doctors, nurses, and paramedics (Scheib). In November 2013, when the Philippi-
nes was devastated by Typhoon Haiyan, there were several relief workers who came
from the American Jewish Distribution Committee (Park). For researcher and profes-
sor Ms. Delmendo, these are concrete acts of cross-fertilization – of Jews learning the
Filipino concept of utang na loob (sense of gratitude) and Filipinos learning the Jewish
concept of Tikkun Olam (heal the world) (Quismundo).
At the present moment, Jews go to the Philippines for business purposes. Additio-
nally, an estimated number of 200 Jews are living in the country (Hoffman). Among
all the refugees that came before, only 40 refugees, who were still children at that time
when they came to the Philippines, are still alive today (Park).

Conclusion
The Philippine-Israeli relations are truly marked by diplomatic and historical ties. The
time of the Philippine history when the country opened its doors wide to the Jewish
refugees is a source of honor and pride on the Philippine side. This clearly demonstra-
tes the natural hospitality that the Filipinos are usually characterized of. Their moral
courage and uprightness, headed by then President Manuel L. Quezon, is definitely
something that has to land in the Philippine history books and be included in
­
the ­Philippine educational curriculum. As the Israeli Ambassador to the Philippines
Effie Ben M­ atityau aptly described it, the Philippine rescue of the Jews is “one of the
most ­beautiful chapters of Philippine history” (Quismundo).

Works Cited
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bataan-death-march. Accessed on 18 Aug. 2017.

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 36

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