Chinese diplomat honored for saving thousands of jews

Michael Blumenthal, former US Secretary of the Treasury from 1977 to 1979, visits the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum on February 7 this year. He fled from Berlin with his parents when he was 13 and lived in Shanghai for eight years before moving to the United States.[Photo by Lai Xinlin/For China Daily]

Plaque in Vienna commemorates Feng Shan Ho's heroic deeds

On April 21, a bronze plaque was unveiled in Vienna, Austria to commemorate the heroism of a Chinese diplomat more than seven decades ago.

Feng Shan Ho, Chinese consul general to Vienna from 1938 to 1940, was one of the first foreign diplomats to save Jews from the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Europe. It was only after his death in 1997 that the story of his humanitarian feat - buried for six decades - finally came to light. In July 2000, Israel bestowed the title of Righteous Among the Nations, one of its highest honors, on Ho "for his humanitarian courage" in the rescue of Jews.

For the 65 people gathered at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Vienna, this was an unprecedented historic event: to publicly recognize a Chinese native for contributions in the European Theater of World War II during this 70th anniversary year of the end of the war.

But for me, it was much more than that. Feng Shan Ho was my father.

In the brilliant sunshine of a spring morning in Vienna, I joined Ambassador Zvi Heifetz of Israel, Ambassador Zhao Bin of China, a special delegation from my father's hometown of Yiyang in China's Hunan province, academics and leaders of the Jewish and Chinese communities to unveil a tri-lingual commemorative plaque in German, Chinese, and English at the site of the former Chinese consulate general in Vienna, now part of the Ritz Carlton Hotel.

It was from this location, following the Anschluss, or union of Germany and Austria in March 1938, that my father began issuing visas to the Chinese port city of Shanghai, helping thousands of Jews escape from the Nazis.

However, the impact of my father's actions extended well beyond Austria and the recipients of his visas; he put Shanghai on the map and into the consciousness of Jews in Nazi-occupied territories as a refuge of last resort.

As a result, from 1938 to 1940, about 18,000 European Jewish refugees fled to Shanghai, escaping almost certain death at the hands of the Nazis.