CINCINNATI — A Filipino-American effort to help 1,200 German and Austrian Jews flee to Manila in the late 1930s was honored last Feb. 12 in a ceremony attended by surviving refugees and descendants of the people who played major roles in a little-known tale of one of the war’s unlikely rescues and heroism.

Gracing the event were the relatives of Alex, Philip, Morris and Herbert Frieder — four brothers from this city in Ohio who ran a cigar business in Manila and who cajoled Philippine and American leaders to let Manila become a haven for fleeing Jews. Also present were the grandchildren of then Philippine President Manuel Luis Quezon.

The reunion, organized by the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion here, was held on the 60th anniversary of the Japanese destruction of Manila’s synagogue, Temple Emil.

Members of the Filipino community in Cincinnati serenaded the relatives with Filipino kundiman songs, as well as “Hava Nagila.” Alice Weston, daughter of Alex Frieder and who was a young girl in Manila when her father and uncle Philip masterminded the rescue, sang along with the Tagalog songs she remembered from childhood.

There were also chicken adobo and other Filipino dishes and delicacies. Refugees led a Sabbath eve prayer service, as Manuel L. Quezon III, a 34-year-old journalist in the Philippines, introduced the blessing over the challah. 

“We’re a very hospitable people and we had experienced exile and imprisonment during the Spanish colonization and the early American occupation, so someone of my grandfather’s generation would have been conscious of the plight of refugees,” Quezon said. “We’re a sucker for anyone who’s suffering.” 

The story of the Manila rescue begins in 1918 with the decision of the Frieder family to move much of its two-for-a-nickel cigar business, the Helena Cigar Factory, from Manhattan to the Philippines, where production would be cheaper. The Frieder brothers took turns living in Manila for two years each in the 20s and 30s, Alice Weston said, in a community that had fewer than 200 Jews.

Frank Ephraim, who as a child was one of the Jewish refugees in Manila and whose book, “Escape to Manila: From Nazi Tyranny to Japanese Terror” (University of Illinois Press, 2003) told the world about the quiet rescue, said that in 1937 Philip Frieder saw European Jews arriving in Manila’s port from Shanghai while it was under siege by the Japanese. (Shanghai remained an open port and eventually harbored 17,000 German Jews.)

The Frieder brothers were reluctant to burden the Philippines with poor refugees, so they focused on importing people in occupations the country needed, like doctors. They established a Jewish Refugee Committee and worked with highly placed friends — President Quezon and U.S. High Commissioner of the Philippines Paul V. McNutt — to help the refugees get passports and visas, then find jobs and home in Manila.

While other countries shut their doors on the fleeing Jews, McNutt was able to finesse State Department bureaucrats to turn a blind eye to quotas and admit 1,000 Jews a year to the Philippines.

President Quezon’s approval was also needed. Dr. Racelle Weiman, the Holocaust center’s director, said there was a letter written by Alex Frieder to Morris Frieder that said skeptics in Mr. Quezon’s administration spoke of Jews as “Communists and schemers” bent on “controlling the world.”

“He assured us that big or little, he raised hell with every one of those persons,” Alex Frieder wrote of Mr. Quezon in August 1939. “He made them ashamed of themselves for being a victim of propaganda intended to further victimize an already persecuted people.”

The surviving refugees, now in their 70s and 80s, said they did not know what to expect in the Philippines, but were delighted by the warm and kind reception they received from the Filipino people.

Documents show the Frieder brothers hoped to bring as many as 10,000 Jews to Manila, but World War II intervened. The Japanese invasion of Manila in 1941 ended the rescue.
The family of the Frieder brothers is grateful for the long-delayed recognition.

“Our children have asked why no one ever told them about this, but we were just kids then,” said Alice Weston, now 78. “After we came back to the United States, my father and uncles never talked about it, I think they just thought it was part of their duty, and they just went on with their lives.”

The Frieder brothers’ photos, letters and other possessions, along with those of the refugees, will become part of a permanent exhibit in Cincinnati, and part of the exhibit will be taken to the U.S, Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and to Manila.