The Myth of Manuel Quezon: The Filipino Schindler
Another of the various ‘national Schindlers’ – for lack of a better term – is the wartime leader of the Philippines Manuel Luis Quezon y Molina (hereafter ‘Quezon’). Unlike the more viable claims about ‘rescuing jews from the Holocaust’ concerning such individuals as Abdol Hussein Sardari (‘the Iranian Schindler’), (1) Moritz Hochschild (‘the Bolivian Schindler’), (2) Ho Feng-Sha (‘the Chinese Schindler’) (3) and Chiune Sugihara (‘the Japanese Schindler’). (4) Those made concerning Quezon are more easily disposed of given that he wasn’t even in Europe at the time.
The claims about Quezon are well-summarized as follows by Chris Newbould:
‘Thanks to his actions, Quezon can reasonably be described as Asia’s equivalent of Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist credited with shielding more than 1,000 Jews from the Holocaust by employing them in his factories.
Between 1938 and 1941, Quezon concocted a plan with his American poker-playing buddies – Paul McNutt, the US high commissioner, Philippine residents and cigar magnates the Frieder brothers, and Dwight Eisenhower, then chief of the US military in the islands.
Their idea would mean Quezon issued visas and assisted with transport to smuggle around 1,200 Jews out of Nazi-occupied Europe and resettle them in the Philippines. Had Quezon’s plans gone perfectly, he would have rescued more than 10,000 lives. He had already built a village where successful escapees could have lived and worked in the city of Marikina, and had declared the southern island of Mindanao a safe space where he hoped to settle a further 10,000 European Jews. Sadly, the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in 1941 cut his scheme short and the president was forced to flee his homeland to establish his government in exile.’ (5)
Given that Quezon’s ‘jew-rescuing activities’ occurred between 1938 (presumably starting around the time of Kristallnacht) and the beginning of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines on 8th December 1941 then this places them before the decision to carry out the so-called ‘Holocaust’ was made – let alone actioned – at the Wannsee Conference in Berlin on 20th January 1942.
Therefore Quezon’s activities ceased before the ‘Holocaust’ was even allegedly decided upon as a policy by the German government and began well before the advent of the Second World War during a time at which the German government was actively pursuing a policy of ‘forced emigration’ as their ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question’.
Thus we should not see Quezon’s ‘jew-rescuing activities’ in the context of the so-called ‘Holocaust’ but rather as his response to the Third Reich’s policy of ‘forced emigration’ in that he wanted to actively engage with the Reich and provide a Philippine home for thousands of emigrating jews. To see them in the context of the ‘Holocaust’ is ridiculous precisely because they had nothing to do with the alleged events that occurred afterwards but rather were part of Quezon’s response to prior policies.
Therefore Quezon cannot be viewed as a ‘Philippine Schindler’ but rather a politician who took advantage of another state’s policies (i.e. the Third Reich’s) to bring significant amounts of potentially skilled labour into his country to the benefit of the economy of the Philippines.
His actions are nothing more than self-serving opportunism rather than those of an idealistic prophet.
References
(1) Dealt with in the following article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-the-iranian-schindler
(2) Dealt with in the following article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-moritz-hochschild
(3) Dealt with in the following article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-ho-feng-shan
(4) Dealt with in the following article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-chiune-sugihara
(5) https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/film/the-filipino-schindler-how-the-country-s-former-president-saved-hundreds-from-the-holocaust-1.877544