The most recent response from
Mr. Eric Saul, Project Director of Visas for Life to my
rebuttal to the claim that Dr Feng Shan Ho saved some
4000 Viennese Jews who fled to Shanghai, he now says that
the visas were not intended as entry visas for Shanghai,
where a visa was unnecessary, and would not have been
valid. That was my point.
Yet, Dr. Ho's daughter Ho Manli,
in an interview printed in the Beijing daily Global Times
(reprinted in the Feb. 20, 2000 Jerusalem Post, the
Chicago Jewish News of February 25. 2000, and Igud Yotzei
Sin of April 2000), described how her father secretly
handed out exit visas that allowed up to 4000 Viennese
Jews to escape Nazi persecution, most of whom are
believed to have been among the estimated 18,000 Jews who
sought refuge in Shanghai. That is not so.
Mr. Saul claims that the value
of Dr. Ho's visas was as proof of emigration. He further
claims that a visa with an end destination was required
under the system set up by Eichmann and the Nazis. That
is not so.
In his book VIENNESE, SPLENDOR,
TWILIGHT AND EXILE, Paul Hofmann describes an assembly
line procedure whereby nearly 700 prospective Jewish
emigrants were processed each business day, with the aim
of locating and seizing any property or assets the
applicant owned. At the end of this process, a German J
passport was issued, and its recipient was warned to
leave Austria within two weeks or else face arrest and
transfer to a concentration camp.
George Clare in LOST WALTZ IN
VIENNA, observes that Eichmann accomplished what no one
had been able to do before &emdash; "Get the greatest
number of Jews out of a country in the shortest possible
time, at the same time increasing the financial tributes
from those ready to go." He further adds: "By the time
each Jewish goose was out of Austria, it had laid a
'golden egg' for Eichmann and the Nazi state."
Neither book mentions the
necessity of acquiring an end destination
visa.
Why would Austrian Jews require
Dr. Ho's end destination visas while German Jews were
able to leave Germany without them? Mr. Saul's response
to this is that they were most likely aided by
sympathetic foreign diplomats in Germany, such as British
Consul Frank Foley, American Consul Stephen B. Vaughn and
others. If that had been the case, German Jews would have
moved to Britain or the USA, instead of fleeing to an
uncertain future in Shanghai.
In his book SHANGHAI REFUGE,
Ernest Heppner describes how his mother was told by a
travel agent she knew that passenger ships to Shanghai
were booked for the next 6-12 months. He hinted, however,
that a shipping agent who was a collector of
impressionist paintings might prove to be helpful in
locating ship tickets in return for two paintings. Within
a short time, a cabin was found for the Heppners, because
a Jewish couple had committed suicide on board the German
ship Potsdam on its way to Italy.
The travel agent then assisted
with the voluminous paperwork required by the Nazi
burocracy, and contacted the Gestapo to expedite
processing of documents. The Heppners then visited the
police to acquire a Fuehrungszeugnis. At the
request of the steamship company the Gestapo authorized
ship tickets from the blocked bank account, and Ernest
Heppner and his mother were given expedited clearance to
leave Germany. Once again, there is no mention of an end
destination visa or an Italian transit visa.
Mr. Saul states that
concentration camp inmates were released from Dachau on
the strength of Dr. Ho's visa as proof of emigration. I
am sure that is true. However, he does not address the
critical issue of the requirement to report to the police
daily upon release, nor does he mention the deadline to
leave Austria in the time frame set by the
Gestapo.
Astrid Freyeisen writes in
SHANGHAI UND DIE POLITIK DES DRITTEN REICHES "Ein
Merkmal der Shanghaier Emigration ist, dass sie fuer
zahlreiche Juden Entlassungsgrund aus Kz &emdash; oder
Gestapohaft wurde ..." "Die Mehrzahl dieser
Menschen wurde durch Verwandte freigekauft, die sich um
eine Shanghai-Passage bemuehten."
This too is a point I had made
in my rebuttal.
Astrid Freyeisen also writes
that emigrants who could not afford ship tickets were
aided by organizations such as the Hilfsverein der
Juden in Deutschland or the Kultusgemeinde in
Vienna.
This statement is verified by
Kurt Grossmann, co-author of THE JEWISH REFUGEE. He
writes that nearly 30,000 German Jews were helped by the
Hilfsverein der Juden in Deutschland -- and when
the Hilfsverein no longer had the funds to do so, it was
subsidized by the Joint and the British Council for
Germany. Alter the annexation of Austria, the Joint gave
the same financial subsidy to the Kultusgemeinde in
Vienna.
According to Mr. Saul, most of
Dr. Ho's visas were issued to organizations rather than
to individuals. Yet, says that there enormous lines in
front of the Chinese Consulate, and extrapolates on the
basis of 5 numbered visas issued to individuals, that Dr.
Ho issued nearly 2000 visas per month prior to
Kristalnacht.
Actually there were enormous
lines in front of foreign consulates all over Vienna,
There were enormous lines outside government offices as
well, as harassed and humiliated Jews strove to procure
documents such as the Fuehrungszeugnis, the
certificate of good conduct, required by the foreign
consulates.
To emphasize the importance of
what he calls the "lifesaving purpose" of Dr. Ho's end
destination visas, Mr. Saul quotes from testimony by her
lawyer in the trial of Recha Sternbuch, whom he calls "a
Swiss Jewish rescuer of Austrian and German
Jews."
David Kranzler is co-author of
HEROINE OF RESCUE, a book which describes Recha
Sternbuch's heroic efforts to rescue Orthodox Jews in the
Spring of 1939, using approximately 400 passports with
Chinese visas. The aim was to smuggle these refugees into
Palestine via Aliyah Beth.
Mr. Saul fails to mention that
Recha Sternbuch is quoted in the same book as saying
"Many times there was no choice but to resort to the
rather unpleasant means of bribing a consular
official..."
There is no mention as to how
these passports and visas were obtained, nor is there any
mention of transit visas.
Kurt Grossmann writes that in
the tragic years that followed the Evian Conference of
July 1938, the political activities of the World Jewish
Congress for the benefit of refugees were intensified,
and he mentions intervention on behalf of refugees from
Austria who crossed illegally into the adjacent
countries; he also makes the point that there were
efforts to assist refugees without visas or with invalid
visas to be admitted to certain countries, to prevent
deportation, or to secure their release from
internment.As an example of the value of Dr. Ho's visas,
Mr. Saul cites the case of an unnamed Austrian family who
reached Italy without enough money for ship tickets. We
all left Germany or Austria with only 10
Reichsmark in our pockets, and as I mentioned
before, ship tickets had to be purchased in the country
of origin. What Mr. Saul does not mention, is that this
family was most likely stranded in Italy with no place to
go, and was now dependent upon the World Jewish Congress,
Joint or Hicem to find them a place of refuge. With ship
tickets to Shanghai, subsidized by the
Kultusgemeinde, they would have had a place to
flee to.
Mr. Saul equates the importance
of Dr. Ho's end destination visas with the so called
Curacao visas issued by Dutch Consul Jan Zwartenjik and
the transit visas issued by Japanese Consul Cuime
Sugihara.
In JAPANESE, NAZIS & JEWS,
David Kranzler tells of the rescue of the Mirra Yeshiva
complete with student body and 2000 Polish Jews. He
writes "On the strength of the Curacao visas, the
Russians gave permission to all the Polish refugees to
leave Lithuania, an otherwise treasonable crime, and the
refugees were able to travel across Siberia via
Intourist."
Astrid Freyeisen's statement
regarding the position of the German government shows a
contrast in the position between the two governments. She
writes: "In der Tat versuchte die Deutsche Regierung
bis zum Auswanderungsverbot im Spaetherbst 1941 nicht die
Emigration nach Shanghai in der Art zu verhindem, wie sie
die in europaeischen Laendem versuchte..."
Mr. Saul makes no mention of a
sympathetic Italian consul in Vienna or elsewhere who
presumably issued transit visas to holders of Dr. Ho's
end destination visas, yet he intimates by his silence
that such a person or persons existed. Why else the
comparison with Consul Zwartenjik and Consul
Sugihara?
In conclusion, Mr. Saul says
that Dr. Feng Shan Ho was taking considerable risks with
his "liberal policy" of issuing the end destination
visas, because of China's pro-German bias. Yet, according
to Paul Hofmann, China was among only 5 countries that
protested the German takeover of Austria. The others were
the Soviet Union, Republican Spain, Mexico and Chile.
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