Jewish Refugees in the Philippines

Background

Frank Ephraim, in his book Escape to Manila: From Nazi Tyranny to Japanese Terror, (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003), ISBN 0-252-02845-7, describes a little known aspect of Jewish efforts to escape from Nazi Germany and Austria.  Himself a refugee from Berlin, Ephraim tells the story of those refugees who managed to reach the Philippines, many hoping then to go on to the United States.  Thanks to the decision of the Japanese to treat them as stateless persons, not as enemy aliens, most survived.  The saga of the Philippines refugees is not as well known as that of Shanghai, and the group was a tenth the size of that of Shanghai.  But the Philippines story is also gripping.  During the course of his research, Ephraim compiled a list of those Jews who reached the Philippines and the various countries from which they came — primarily Germany, Poland, and Austria, but also Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Italy, Latvia, Bulgaria, China — and a few who received visas but never arrived.

Database

The database includes 1,318 names of individuals who received visas.

The fields in the database are:

• Surname (family name)
• First name
• Family member (relationship to head of household)
• City from which fled
• Country from which fled (place where received visa)
• Year of arrival
• Place of Birth
• Status / Title
• Comments (including fate, relatives' names, and other information)

Acknowledgements

Peter Landé computerized the records for JewishGen with the permission of the author.  (Note: Author is deceased as of circa 2006).

Thanks to JewishGen Inc. for providing the website and database expertise to make this database accessible.  Special thanks to Susan King, Warren Blatt and Michael Tobias for their continued contributions to Jewish genealogy.  Particular thanks to the Research Division headed by Joyce Field and to Nolan Altman, coordinator of Holocaust files.

Frank Ephraim
May 2004

Searching the Database

This database is searchable via JewishGen's Holocaust Database.