MANILA, Philippines—Before Schindler’s List, there was

another document—the Philippine visa—that saved hundreds of

Jews from the gas chambers and mass graves of the Holocaust. In
1939, two years before World War II reached the Pacific, the Commonwealth government under
President Manuel L. Quezon allotted 10,000 visas and safe haven to Jews fleeing Nazi Europe.
Some 1,200 Jews made it to Manila before the city itself fell to Japanese
invaders.
Before sunset on June
21, 70 years later, the first ever monument
honoring Quezon and the Filipino nation for this “open door
policy” was inaugurated on Israeli soil.
The monument—a geometric, seven-meter-high sculpture titled “Open Doors”—was designed
by Filipino artist Junyee (Luis Lee Jr.).
At the program held at the 65-hectare Holocaust Memorial Park in Rishon
LeZion, Israel’s fourth largest city south of Tel Aviv, the mere
mention of “Taft Avenue” by one of the speakers brought Ralph
Preiss to the verge of tears.
Preiss, a father of four now in his 70s, later explained that Taft Avenue was where a
synagogue-run soup kitchen provided the first hot meals he had
as a refugee. He was eight when he arrived from Rosenberg,
Germany, with his parents at the port of Manila on March 23,
1939.
“If I stayed in Germany I would have been killed,” Preiss, a retired
engineer living in Connecticut in the United States, told the
Inquirer in an interview.
“My cousin who lived in Berlin and whose father was a lawyer went to
Paris [instead]. The Paris police handed them over to the Nazis,
and they were sent to Auschwitz and got killed,” he recalled,
adding:
“I’m very grateful to the Philippines for opening the doors and letting us
in.”
‘Salamat sa inyo!’
At the program with an audience of around 300, Max Weissler, glib as a jeepney driver plying
the streets of Quiapo, barked onstage: “Thank you! Salamat sa inyo lahat, lahat nandito!
Nakapunta kayo lahat! Salamat sa inyo!”
“Unfortunately,” Weissler noted, “very little is known about this great deed of President Quezon
and the Filipino people during the Holocaust. Very little is known about this among us Israelis,
the Jews around the world, and even in the Philippines.”
Weissler was 11 when he and his German family settled in Pasay
City. To eke out a
living, his mother baked cakes that his father sold.
They all survived the war, and Weissler went on to fight another by joining the US Army in
the Korean War.
“We came to Manila
with practically nothing and always found help
one way or another from the Filipinos,” Weissler said. “They
have an open heart, and this is why we have this monument.”
3 triangles
Junyee won a competition held by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts in February
2007 for the monument project.
He bagged a P300,000 cash prize for his design, which bested seven other entries, including one
submitted by a National Artist, according to the Philippine Embassy in Tel Aviv.
Rendered mainly in steel and set on a base of marble tiles shipped from Romblon, the monument
depicts three doors of ascending heights (three, five and seven meters).
Viewed from above, Junyee’s work joins together “three triangles”—one representing the
triangle of the Philippine flag, and the others signifying the two triangles that form the Star of
David in the Israeli flag.
Etched on the marble floor are three sets of “footprints” approaching the doors. The prints are
said to be those of Weissler, fellow Jewish refugee George Loewenstein, and Doryliz Goffer, a
young Filipino-Israeli born in the Philippines and a granddaughter of
aHolocaust survivor.
Modena’s mission
In November 2005, speaking before the Rotary Club of Jerusalem, then Philippine Ambassador
to Israel Antonio Modena launched a “campaign for the remembrance of the Philippines’
humanitarian support for the Jews,” according to theDepartment
of Foreign Affairs.
That campaign merely proposed that a marker for the Philippines be placed on the
Holocaust Memorial Park’s “Boulevard of the Righteous
Among the Nations,” which features a row of red granite blocks
with the names of countries and number of persons in each
country who saved Jews.
But the response from then Rishon LeZion Mayor Meir Nitzan “surprised” the Philippine
mission: Not just a slab of granite but a monument with its own prominent spot in the park was
to be built to thank the Philippines and its people.
Technical and financial difficulties delayed the completion of the monument for two
years; Modena and Nitzan originally set the inauguration in 2007
to mark the golden anniversary of Philippine-Israeli relations.
Modena died of lung cancer in February 2007. His name is first on
the dedication plaque unveiled at the “Open Doors” monument
on June 21.
Modena’s campaign was said to have been inspired by the 2003
book “Escape to Manila: From Nazi Tyranny to Japanese
Terror” by Frank Ephraim.
The 246-page eyewitness account gathers the voices of 36 refugees, who described in detail their
arduous journeys to Manila, the lives they tried to build, and their fresh
ordeals under Japanese rule.
Born in Berlin, Ephraim was eight when he fled to Manila with his
parents in 1939. After the war he immigrated to the United
States, began a career in naval architecture and later worked
with the US Department of Transportation.
Ephraim died in August 2006. “He was very attached to the Philippines and was
very anxious to go back there. We were supposed to go, and
then he got lung cancer and that was the end of it. It was just too
bad,” said his American widow Ruth, another special guest at
the inaugural.
Filipino pride
Tourism Secretary Joseph Durano, who attended the inaugural on the invitation of the Israeli
government, shared passages from the book which, he said, “made me proud to be a Filipino.”
Quoting Ephraim, Durano read: “Filipinos were a tolerant people who never interfered 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.
“There was never a ghetto in Manila, and Jews lived in close proximity
with Filipinos, and all sides introduced neighbors to each other’s
cuisine, music, culture and history.”
According to Durano, the “Open Doors” monument “celebrates the most powerful force on
earth, second only to God’s will, and that is the human will.”
“It was just amazing, the will of these Jewish families who escaped to Manila.
Some
had to go through Siberia, some had to take boats for weeks and
months,” he said.
But also, Durano said, the monument “celebrates the Filipino heart ... a heart that touches others
with compassion, a heart that makes one a blessing to the world.”