Jewish, Russian, and Indochinese Refugees in the Philippines

Many peo­ple are unaware that the Philip­pines pro­vid­ed safe haven to Jew­ish, Russ­ian, and Indochi­nese refugees.

In the late 1930s, 1,200 Ger­man and Aus­tri­an Jews fled the Holo­caust of Europe and found refuge in Mani­la. The plan for the res­cue report­ed­ly came about dur­ing reg­u­lar pok­er games which includ­ed Philip­pine Pres­i­dent Manuel Que­zon, an Amer­i­can offi­cial Paul McNutt, Col. Dwight Eisen­how­er, and the Jew­ish-Amer­i­can Frieder broth­ers. The Philip­pines offered visas to Jews who most like­ly would have died in Nazi Ger­many. Short­ly after the Jew­ish refugees set­tled in the Philip­pines, the Japan­ese invad­ed the Philip­pines and the refugees found them­selves in anoth­er war. How­ev­er, the Japan­ese accept­ed the Jews as Ger­mans (their allies) and did not per­se­cute them.

For the aid the Philip­pines extend­ed to the 1,200 Jews, Israel cre­at­ed an “Open Doors” mon­u­ment in Ris­hon Lezion Memo­r­i­al Park just off Tel Aviv.

In 1949, the Philip­pines wel­comed 5,500 Rus­sians. These were the so-called White Rus­sians (or anti-com­mu­nists) who had fled Bol­she­vik Rus­sia and the civ­il war. They went to Chi­na but had to flee a sec­ond time when Mao Tse-tung came into pow­er.  The Inter­na­tion­al Res­cue put out a call for coun­tries to help the Rus­sians who had to leave Shang­hai. Only the Philip­pines, under the lead­er­ship of Pres­i­dent Elpe­dio Quiri­no, said it would take them. With the help of the World Coun­cil of Church­es and the Inter­na­tion­al Refugee Orga­ni­za­tion, the dis­placed Rus­sians set­tled on Tubabao Island, in Cen­tral Philip­pines. Trav­el­ing on rusty ships, they arrived and set up a vil­lage orga­nized into 14 dis­tricts, with church­es, schools, com­mu­nal kitchen, hos­pi­tal, den­tal clin­ic, police force, small jail, open air cin­e­ma, and oth­er ameni­ties. Most of the Rus­sians even­tu­al­ly left for the Unit­ed States, Aus­tralia, and France, but some 40 fam­i­lies con­tin­ue to live in Manila.

 

A sur­vivor, Kyra Tatari­noff said: “Hav­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go to the Philip­pines, being accept­ed there, we are grate­ful to the peo­ple, to the gov­ern­ment, for let­ting us. We think of Tubabao a lot, espe­cial­ly those who were teenagers then. They have a very spe­cial place in their hearts for Tubabao.” This quote is from Rap­pler, which has some inter­est­ing pic­tures of the Russ­ian refugees.

Here is a blog with infor­ma­tion about the White Rus­sians in the Philip­pines.  And here is an Inquir­er arti­cle about the Russ­ian refugees. 

This is an aside, but when Super Typhoon Haiyan dev­as­tat­ed Tubabao in 2013, some White Rus­sians who had found refuge there decades ago, raised funds to help the Filipinos.

As a result of the dis­place­ment of peo­ple caused by the war in Indochi­na, the Philip­pine Refugee Pro­cess­ing Cen­ter near Morong, Bataan, was opened in 1980, as a refuge for the ‘boat peo­ple’.

I wrote about a Viet­namese woman who found safe haven in the Philip­pines dur­ing this time. Lee spoke high­ly of the Fil­ipinos and Philip­pines for help­ing her and the oth­er refugees. She was preg­nant when she left Viet­nam to take the dan­ger­ous boat voy­age. They were cramped, did not have enough food and water, and some of her com­pan­ions died on that har­row­ing jour­ney. When she and oth­ers arrived Hong Kong, she said she was told dai­ly to have an abor­tion.  When she was trans­ferred to the Philip­pines, she said Fil­ipinos took spe­cial care of her and gave her vit­a­mins — she relat­ed her sto­ry with strong emo­tion. Her son, Philip, named after the Philip­pines, was born in the Philip­pine refugee center.

I am proud that even though the Philip­pines is con­sid­ered a poor devel­op­ing coun­try, Fil­ipinos and its gov­ern­ment have always had the gen­eros­i­ty of spir­it to wel­come and offer hope to those in need.

I pray for all the dis­placed peo­ple in the world!

Read also
Jews in the Philip­pines — 1940 and 2013
Viet­namese Boat Peo­ple and Lee’s Nail Salon

• Some Prayers for Peace and Serenity
• Pho­tos of the Jews and Viet­namese in the Philip­pines are cour­tesy of Wikipedia; I took a pho­to of the Rap­pler page.

Tags: refugees, #refugees, Jew­ish, Russ­ian, Viet­namese, Indochi­nese, boat peo­ple, White Rus­sians, Philip­pines, Fil­ipinos, refugee cen­ters, his­to­ry, World War II, Viet­nam War, Bol­she­vik, Rus­sia, Chi­na, holocaust

This arti­cle is reprint­ed from my trav­el blog (Trav­els (and more) with Cecil­ia Brainard:

https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2015/09/jewish-russian-and-indochinese-refugees.html