Quezon's list: How the Philippines gave sanctuary to Jews fleeing the Holocaust

The image of the Philippines in the international media (assuming the news is not about death tolls from natural calamities) is that of a country whose people are leaving in large numbers. Every day thousands of Filipinos fly out of the maligned airport to seek economic opportunity abroad. We are largely known through our highly efficient nurses, seamen, domestic helpers and Manny Pacquiao.

A lesser-known fact about the Philippines is that it has long been a haven for refugees and displaced people. This humanitarian tradition extends to people of any ethnicity, color or creed. The famous Philippine hospitality is not an invention of public relations experts but a quality inextricable from being Pinoy.

In the 1980s the Philippines gave safe refuge to Indochinese fleeing the Vietnam War. More than 400,000 Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians found homes at the Philippine Refugee Processing Center in Morong, Bataan. In a smaller way, people escaping violence and tyranny in other countries have rebuilt their lives in our country. In June 2010 a report by John Carney in the South China Morning Post noted how despite having massive problems of its own, the Philippines is the one nation that welcomes refugees unquestioningly and allows them peace of mind and a fresh start. 

Essentially we don’t care who you are, if you need a home you are welcome here. We don’t have a lot, but we’ll share it. (Sometimes to the point where we forget to protect our own interests, but that is another topic.) 

That is why it rankles when foreign countries issue travel advisories against the Philippines — a long history of hospitality and acceptance overlooked for isolated incidents. (Again, another topic.) 

One virtually unknown episode in the last century illustrates how the Philippines became a light in a very dark time. In 2008 German-born author Frank Ephraim published Escape to Manila: From Nazi Tyranny to Japanese Terror, an account of the Jewish refugee experience in World War II. In 1939 Ephraim was one of 1,200 Jews who fled the Nazi genocide in Europe and took sanctuary in the Philippines.

Thanks to the Steven Spielberg movie (and the 1982 Thomas Keneally book it was based on) many of us know that in WWII a German businessman named Oskar Schindler saved over 1,200 Jews from the concentration camps and certain death. What we do not know is that in the late 1930s in Manila, while they were playing poker and smoking cigars, seven men decided to rescue 1,200 Jews from the Nazis.

Documentary filmmaker Russ Hodge, 3 Roads Communications and Frieder Films are in Manila to shoot Rescue in the Philippines, the story of how President Manuel L. Quezon, the US High Commissioner Paul McNutt, Colonel (and future president) Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the Frieders, four Jewish businessmen from Ohio who had a cigar business in Manila, overcame the huge bureaucratic and logistical challenges of saving people from the Holocaust.

They did it because it was the right thing to do.

“The story will inform future generations about the importance of individual moral courage,” says producer Barbara Sasser, granddaughter of Alex Frieder. “It seems that a few men can do great things together while sitting around a poker table, smoking cigars.” Rescue in the Philippines is produced in association with The Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education in Cincinnati. 

Filming started at the Open Doors monument in Israel, then moved to South Carolina where one of the rescued told her story. Marsha Miadowski, now 103 years old, is a gentile who married a Jewish man who worked in his family’s cigar business. Along with 30,000 Jews he had been arrested and taken to a concentration camp when the visas from the Philippines arrived. Marsha Miadowski managed to convince the camp commandant to release her husband because the Frieders had given him a job at their cigar factory in Manila.

On Thursday the filmmakers interviewed President Quezon’s daughter Nini Avancena, now 90. Filming will continue at the Manila Hotel and other locations. (The Bourne Legacy is not the only film shoot in town.) “We’re looking forward to showing you the film next year,” said director Hodge. 

How strange yet symmetrical that film, an art of illusions, should become today’s most potent teacher of history. Again, another topic.