Feng Shan Ho – a Chinese Holocaust rescuer

[ The Canadian Jewish News, November 29, 2001, Page 11 ]

Holocaust rescuers of the likes of Raoul Wallenerg, Chiune Sugihira and Carl Lutz, all of whom were diplomats of worked under diplomatic cover, saved Jews by issuing life-saving special passes or visas, sometimes in defiance of their own governments and to the detriment of their careers.

Wallenberg, a Swede labouring on behalf of the War Refugee Board, plucked approximately 100,000 Hungarian Jews in Budapest from the jaws of death. Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat stationed in Kovno (Kaunas), issued a blizzard of transit visas. Lutz, Switzerland's consul in Budapest, doled out vissas, too, and is credited with saving some 62,000 Jews in Hungary.

And then there was Feng Shan Ho, whos feat of heroism has only lately emerged from the fog of obscurity. Ho, China's consul general in Vienna from 1938 to 1940, issued an average of 500 end-destination visas a month. These documents enabled Jews to leave Nazi-occupied Austria, ostensibly for Shanghai, China.

Ho's remarkable activities surfaced in Canada several years ago, when a Chinese cultural centre in Vancouver mounted an exhibit called The Shanghai Connection. It told the story of 18,000 European Jewish refugees who found a haven in Shanghai during World War II.

Last spring, the exhibition – a joint venture of the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, the Chinese Cultural and Community Centre and the Manitoba Japanese Canadian Citizenship Association – was brought to Winnipeg.

Now, until Dec. 22, it is at the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Toronto (5183 Sheppard Ave. East).

Last month, on the 100th anniversary of Ho's birth, Dr. Joseph Du, a Winnipeg pediatrician who helped organize The Shanghai Connection, eulogized him at Holocaust Education Week in Toronto.

“I was impressed by his noble gesture,” said Dr. Du in an interview before his talk.

Ho's daughter, Manli Ho, who accompanied Dr. Du here, told me that her father neither sought nor received recognition in his lifetime. But on July 7, 2000, Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, bestowed upon him the title of Righteous Among the Nations, citing his “humanitarian courage.”

“His reason for helping Jews was simply this,” she observed. “He said: ‘I thought it only natural to feel compassion and to want to help. From the standpoint of humanity, that is the way it should be.’”

Ho, she added, was a man of integrity. “He stood by his convictions and refused to renounce his principles for the sake of political expediency or even personal safety. And he bore the consequences without complaint.”

Born into poverty in Yiyang, in China's Hunan province, he was raised as a Christian in the Lutheran church. A brilliant student, he graduated from the College of Yale-in-China and the University of Munich, where he earned a PhD in political economy.

“I'm not sure he knew Jews in China,” said Manli. “He spent a year in Shanghai in the 1920s and may have encountered people there who were Jewish. Who knows? But he was certainly aware of the Jewish people, having grown up in the Christian-Judeo tradition.”

He launched his 40-year career in China's foreign service in 1935 with a posting in Turkey. Dispatched to the Chinese legation in Vienna two years later, he was promoted to consul general in May 1938, following Germany's annexation of Austria.

As she tells it, Ho was repelled by the fanatical welcome the Viennese accorded to Adolf Hitler as he rode triumphantly into the city in the wake of the Anschluss. His impression of Hitler, whom he met at a reception, was tart: “He was an unpleasant martinet.”

With the Anschluss, life for Austrian Jews turned nightmarish. But it was difficult to get out of Austria. Canada, like Switzerland, was reluctant to accept Jews. The United States' Austrian quota had been filled. Britain discouraged immigration to Palestine.

The plight of Austrian Jewry was exacerbated by a resolution at the Evian Conference closing the door to Jewish refugees clamouring to escape Nazi persecution.

Nevertheless, Jews flocked to foreign consulates in Vienna, hoping against hope to obtain precious visas.

Struck by their desperate situation, Ho gave visas to any and all who wished to try their luck in Shanghai. “My father's intent was to provide safe passage out of Austria,” she explained. “Shanghai was under Japanese occupation and a visa was not needed for entry. But a visa, as proof of emigration, was required by the Nazi authorities for Jews to leave Austria. Many visa recipients did not necessarily use them for Shanghai, but to make their way to Palestine, Cuba, the Philipines and other parts of the world.”

Ho's superior, Chen Jie, the Chinese ambassador to Germany, was aghast by his gesture. “He wanted to maintain good relations with Germany and did not want to contravene Hitler's anti-Jewish policy,” she noted.

Jie ordered Ho to desist, but he reminded him of the Chinese foreign ministry's liberal visa policy. On the pretext that Ho was “selling” visas, Jie sent a subordinate, Ding Wen Yuan, to confront Ho in Vienna.

“After a thorough investigation, Ding found no evidence of wrongdoing,” she said. On April 8, 1939, however, the Chinese government punished Ho with a demerit.

Throughout this period, Nationalist China maintained close ties with Germany. Chiang Kai-shek, China's longtime president, was an admirer of Germany, used German military advisors and equipment and sent his younger son to a military academy in Germany.

“This son became a second lieutenant in the Wehrmacht's 98th Jaeger Regiment, which participated in Germany's march into Austria in 1938.”

In May 1940, when the “phony war” phase of the war came to a crashing end with Germany's invasion of France, Ho was transferred to New York City and then to Chungking, China's wartime capital.

China closed its consulate general in Vienna in 1941 after breaking diplomatic relations with Germany.

Posted to Cairo in 1947, Ho served as China's ambassador to Egypt and seven other Arab countries until 1956. Manli, who would later become a reporter in the United States, was born in Cairo.

Ho remained loyal to the Chinese Nationalist cause in the aftermath of the 1949 Communist revolution on the mainland.

Subsequently, he was Taiwan's ambassador to Mexico, Bolivia and Colombia.

At the age 72, he retired. Afterwards, for reasons which remain unclear to his family to this day, he was censured and denied a pension by Taiwan.

Living modestly in retirement in San Francisco, he wrote his memoirs, Forty Years of My Diplomatic Life, published in 1990. He died on Sept. 28, 1997. The People's Republic of China sent a wreath to the funeral, but Taiwan ignored his passing.

Asked why his story is just coming to the fore now, Manli, a resident of Arrowsic, Maine, said, “Except for two anecdotes from the Austrian era, my father didn't talk about it much. After he left Vienna, he tried to contact some of his Jewish friends. A lot he couldn't find. They were murdered in the Holocaust.”

Pan Guang

Exhibit recalls Chinese saviour of wartime Jews

[ The Canadian Jewish News, November 22, 2001, Page 16 ]

Toronto – Pan Guang is that rarity of rarities.

In China, the world's most populous nation, he is one of only 20 to 30 academic specialists currently working in Jewish studies.

Guang, the director of the Centre for Inernational Studies in Shanghai, was here last week to deliver lectures at York University and the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Toronto.

“The topic of Jews in China has become hot, though in some parts of China people know little about Jews,” said Guang, a 54-year-old scholar whos specialties include Israel and the Arab world.

Guang's institute, situated in the Shanghai Academy of Social Science, houses the Centre of Jewish Studeies, of which he is dean.

Established in 1998, the centre sponsors lectures on Jewish and Israeli topics, organizes conferences and sets up tours for foreign dignitaries.

There are identical centres in Beijing, Nanjing and Qunming.

In Shanghai, Guang has personally guided several Israeli primer ministers and presidents: Yitzhak Rabin, Benjamin Netanyahu, Chaim Herzog and Ezer Weizman.

He also showed Shimon Peres around when he was foreign minister, and Ariel Sharon when he was minister of national infrastructure.

“More and more Chinese people are interested in Jews and Israel,” said Guang, a historian and political scientist who wears several hats.

In addition to being vice-chair of the Shanghai Jewish Studeies Association, he is director of the Chinese Society for Middle East Studies.

Guang's newest book, The Jews in China, was published last month in Chinese and English editions.

It covers the Jewish experience in China – from the settlement of Persian merchants in Kaifeng in the eighth century to the arrival of German and Austrian refugees in Shanghai in the 1930s.

Guang is also the author or editor of Revitalization of Jewish People, Jewish Civilization and The Jews in Shanghai.

His scholarly articles run the gamut from Notes on Britain's Policies Towards Palestine, 1897–1948 to The Emergence of Early Zionism and its Ideological Origins.

In 1996, he received a Canadian government grant to finance his research on Jewish families in Canada whose roots are partially in Shanghai. He spent five weeks in Canada, talking to members of about 100 such families.

Born in Shanghai, Guang has delved into Jewish history for the past 22 years. His interest in Jews – and Israel – was aroused by Jewish neighbours.

He estimates that China is home to approximately 7,000 Jews: 6,000 in Hong Kong, 200 in Shanghai, 200 in Beijing and about 500 elsewhere.

Ninety percent or more of the Jewish residents in China are Ashkenazim. They are originally from the United States, Australia, Europe and Israel. They are mainly businesspeople, students and diplomats.

Serving their religious needs are several functioning synagogues in Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Apart from an acquaintanceship with Jewish neighbours, Guang was drawn to Jews by indirect means.

His father, born in Vietnam, was the butt of anti-Chinese discrimination, which Guang compares to anti-Semitism.

As a student, Guang studies the similarities between these prejudices, as well as the position of Chinese and Jewish communities outside their ancestral lands.

He soon discovered that Jews and Chinese shared an affinity for family and education, and had both been singled out for persecution.

“The Chinese, like the Jews, have suffered much devastation. This has given the Chinese people deep sympathy for the Jewish people.”

Guang, whose interests encompass the Holocaust, explained that anti-Semitism never took root in China because Confucianism, unlike Christianity, never demonized Jews.

Chinese universities do not yet have departments of Jewish studies, but courses on Jewish history have been introduced.

At the Centre of Jewish Studies, the most popular courses deal with modern-day Israel and international terrorism.

Before China formally established diplomatic relations with Israel in January 1992, there were few opportunities for academics like himself to study Israel on a systematic basis.

“It was quite a sensitive topic,” he said.

Since then, the field has been thrown wide open, and Guang has taken advantage of the new situation.

Guang has visited Israel three times, having been a visiting scholar at Bar Ilan University and the Hebrew University.

China's bilateral relations with Israel, he believes, “are going very well.” They enjoy “fruitful co-operation” in areas ranging from trade to the military.

And, he added, both nations share a common interest in combating Islamic fundamentalism, which, in China, manifests itself in the western part of the country.

Ten years ago, China was pro-Palestinian. Today, he noted, “we're neutral.”

Before the advent of diplomatic relations, virtually the only kind of stories Chinese newspapers printed about Israel turned on its occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Glan Heights.

Now, he suggested, the coverage is far more balanced. Zionism is favourably compared to Chinese nationalism and books by Abba Eban and about Golda Meir have been published.

Guang is familiar with a smattering of Hebrew, notably the word “shalom,” but his Yiddish is, for all intents and purposes, non-existent.

“I know one Yiddish phrase,” he said, a smile wreathing his face. “A grosse dank, thank you very much.”

Exhibit recalls Chinese saviour of wartime Jews

[ The Canadian Jewish News, November 15, 2001, Page 15 ]

Toronto – Asked to recall a singular memory about being a Jewish refugee in Shanghai, Eric Goldstaub of Toronto doesn't pause. “I remember everything,” he said. “Life was interesting and challenging. But when you're young, everything is interesting and challenging.”

Goldstaub adapted well to his war-era refuge. He and his family lived in Shanghai for a decade – even for four years after World War II ended – and he found gainful work as a cosmetics salesman and an importer.

Last week, while gazing at a panel of photographs of his youthful self and his clan living and frolicking in Shanghai, Goldstaub recalled those days as happy and safe. “I have nothing but the greatest respect for the Chinese people,” he said.

Now a hale 80, Goldstaub owes his life to a little-known saviour of wartime Jews. While stationed in Vienna from 1938 to 1940, Chinese consul general Dr. Feng Shan Ho issue thousands of life-saving visas to Jews, despite orders from his government to stop, and even after he was reprimanded for his actions.

In all, some 18,000 Viennese, German and Polish Jews found sanctuary from the Nazis in the teeming, cosmopolitan port of Shanghai, China's largest city, which was already home to a Jewish community of Iraqis, Indians and Russians. There, under Chinese officials and Japanese military occupiers, the Jews flourished. Holidays were celebrated, there was kosher food, and children went to classes. But above all, Adolf Hitler and Germany were half a world away.

The feeling one gets when viewing Jews in Shanghai: The Story of Survival, a remarkable exhibit that opened last Monday as part of Holocaust Education Week, is that while the refugees found a haven free of anti-Semitism and danger, it wasn't all easy going.

“It was very hard for my parents,” Goldstaub recalled. “They had it rough. They lost everything and had to start over in a place that was welcoming but still very different and strange.”

The exhibit, at the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Toronto (5183 Sheppard Ave. E.), chronicles Ho's heroics, as well as Jewish life in Shanghai before, during and after the war (with photographs of the Hongkou Jewish “ghetto” and other Jewish sites in the city); first-person recollections, videos, artifacts; and the records of several Toronto Jewish families who lived in Shanghai between 1938 and 1948.

Gathering for last week's cross-cultural opening were leaders from the Chinese and Jewish communities, Senator Vivienne Poy, Ontario Attorney General David Young and the consuls general of China and Israel.

Joining them was Ho's daughter, Manli Ho. She recalled that her father, who died in 1997, spoke only about two events during his days in Vienna: Hitler's triumphant entrance into the city following Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938, and how “appalled” he was at the Nazi's brutality toward Jews; and Kristallnacht, the night of Nov. 10, 1938, when Nazi stormtroopers smashed Jewish shops and torched synagogues.

Her father, Ho said, once faced down the Gestapo to rescue some Jewish friends with his prized visas. His death-defying efforts led to his induction a year ago as a Righteous Among the Nations at Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.

Why did he do it? “If you knew my father,” she said, “you would have known a man who lived his life according to the best of Confucian and Judeo-Christian values.” Indeed, the exhibit quotes her father as explaining his acts thus: “From the standpoint of humanity, this is the way it should be.”

That philosophy led Ho to issue an average 500 visas a month. At one point, the Chinese government punished the diplomat with a demerit. Undaunted, he persisted, issuing as many as 900 of the precious documents monthly.

Eighteen of those went to a young Goldstaub, who visited some 50 foreign missions in Vienna (including Canada's) to beg for exit visas for him and his extended family, after being forced to scrub the streets of Vienna in the wake of Kristallnacht. China's was his last stop.

Recently, the World Monuments Fund added Shanghai's Ohel Rachel synagogue, built in 1920, to its 2002 Watch List of the 100 Most Endangered Sites. In 1993, the city declared the Sephardic shul a historic landmark, affording it some protection. The city's only other synagogue, Ohel Moshe, has been turned into a museum.

Programs relating to the exhibit included lectures last week by Prof Guang Pan, dean of the Centre for Jewish Studies in Shanghai and author of two books on the Jewish experience in China; and Dr. Joseph Du, chair of Winnipeg's Chinese Cultural & Community Centre, where the exhibit showed earlier this year.

[On Sunday, Nov. 25,] at Toronto's Chinese cultural centre, a public forum to be chaired by Karen Shopsowitz (whose film, A Place to Save Your Life, is included in the exhibit), will take place at 2 p.m.

The exhibit runs to Dec. 22. For details, call 416-292-9293.

Eric Goldstaub points to a photo of himself in the exhibit, Jews in Shanghai: The Story of Survival.

Exhibit tells story of Shanghai Jewish community

[ The Jewish Tribune, November 8, 2001, Page 12 ]

Dr. Feng [Shan] Ho helped thousands of European Jews escape the horrors of the Holocaust by providing them with refuge in Shanghai. Despite the large number of people he saved, his extraordinary story was not widely known until last year when the late Chinese diplomat was honoured posthumously as “Righteous Among the Nations” by the Israeli Government.

Ho was China's Consul General in Vienna from 1938 to 1940. This was the time of the onset of the Second World War – a dark and terrible time when antisemitism was rampant in Europe and Jews were being openly hunted and persecuted. Their only hope was emigration. But most countries closed their doors – or only opened them a crack.

Risking dangerous repercussions to himself and his family, Ho hand-wrote visas enabling the desperate Jews to escape to Shanghai where they lived in safety until the end of the war.

From Novermber 5, through December, The Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Toronto wil be presenting an exhibition that will, through photographs, artifacts, historians and survivors themselves, tell the story of the complex Jewish community in Shanghai that came out of this migration.

Ho's daughter, Ms. Manli Ho, will talk about her father, and a documentary, “A Place to Save Your Life,” which tells the story of the Jewish refugee community of Shanghai, will be shown during the exhibition period.

Professor Guang Pan, author of “Jews in Shanghai” (1995), and “Jews in China” will deliver talks on “Jews in China: Legends, History, and Perspectives” and “The Adventures and Survivals in Shanghai: the Jewish Experience.”

Most of Shanghai's Jews left after the war, says [Mr. Stephen] Siu, Executive Director of the CCC who is organizing the exhibit in Toronto. Some went to Hong Kong like the well-known Khadouri family, but the majority established themselves in the Western world.

“Their story in inspirational,” says Siu. “In spite of hardships and formidable obstacles, most of them went on to make successes out of their lives.”

“Over 60 years have passed, but this story of survival is still relevant today,” says Dr. Ming Tat Cheung, President of the CCC. [“]It's important for our future generations to learn about the Holocaust and racism. The more we understand, the less likely it is to happen again.”

Siu feels the exhibit is particularly meaningful at this time when “there is a possibility of ‘World War Three[’]… lest history repeat itself. None of us want to see people killed, therefore people should learn the lessons of the Holocaust.”

He urges survivors of Shanghai to come forward and get in touch with him. He encourages them to share their stories and any artifacts they might have that could be part of the coming exhibit.

Dr. Feng [Shan] Ho