As the world commemorates Holocaust Remembrance day, B'Nai Brith World Center is honoring a figure whose contributions to save the Jewish people are not well known.
In a series of events held in both Tel Aviv and the UN, the organization will honor former Philippine President Manuel Quezon, whose small Jewish community in Manila took in Jewish refugees during World War II.
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The Philippines being a refuge for the Jewish people began in 1937, against the backdrop of the war between China and Japan. Then, the American high commissioner of the Philippines, which was a US territory at the time, waived visa requirements for 28 Jewish families, allowing them refuge in the South Pacific country. Manila's Jewish community then took in Jews from Germany after they reached Shanghai.
Outraged over the treatment of Jews in Germany during the war, Quezon dedicated himself to bring even more Jews to the country and worked with the US government to do so, The Jerusalem Post reported.
Quezon devised a plan to bring some 70,000 Jewish refugees to the Philippines to work across several industries, but his plans were thwarted when the country was invaded by the Japanese.
However, thanks to Quezon's "Open Doors" policy, 1,300 refugees were able to call Manila their home and, today, that act of kindness is the foundation of bilateral relations between the Philippines and Israel.
"Jews were not welcome in many countries.This was a unique effort by a leader of a country," Alan Schneider, director of the B'nai Brith World Center, told The Jerusalem Post.
Monday's event in Tel Aviv will feature a panel discussion with Professor Robert Rockaway of Tel Aviv University, as well as screenings of excerpts from the ABS-CBN iWANT documentary, The Last Manilaners, and Star Cinema's feature film on President Quezon's decision to accept Jewish refugees, Quezon's Game.
