Depiction of Chinese Schindler falls short

To save lives, he ignored orders from above

Ho Feng Shan issued thousands of end-destination visas to Shanghai, as Jews needed to show proof of emigration to leave Germany and Austria. The 1937 Japanese occupation had left Shanghai harbor unmanned, without passport control or immigration procedures, and anyone could land without papers, according to Ho Manli, his daughter.

Jews could use Ho's Shanghai visas to make their way elsewhere, but when "nearly none of the 32 participating nations in the 1938 Evian Conference was willing to accept Jewish refugees", her father's actions put the Chinese port city on the map as a refuge of last resort. As a result, some 18,000 European Jews fled there between 1938 and 1940.

Even more crucially, the Shanghai visas led to the release of those detained by the Nazis and deported to concentration camps. Ho Feng Shan himself confronted the Gestapo to effect the release of a Jewish friend from detention, his daughter says.

"In his two years as Chinese consul general in Vienna, my father was ordered to desist (his visa-issuing activities) by his superiors and later reprimanded and punished by his own government for his disobedience. In early 1939, his consulate building was confiscated by the Nazis, and he was forced to relocate to smaller quarters at his own expense. He remained undaunted throughout," she adds.