Power of good

The year 1938 was coming to a close, a year plagued by tensions in Europe as the Nazis began to invade and occupy neighboring countries. Nicholas Winton, a stockbroker in London, was ready to leave for a ski vacation in Switzerland when he was convinced by a friend to visit Prague to see, for himself, an unfolding urgent crisis.

Winton obliged and witnessed hundreds of Jewish families thrown out of their homes by Nazi occupying forces, desperately looking for ways to get their children to safety. He returned to London and plunged into a humanitarian effort, succeeding in rescuing 669 of the children, most of whom never saw their parents again because of the Holocaust, the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis.

The story of Prague’s children was shared by actor Sir David Suchet at a Christmas concert of the Tabernacle Choir (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), recently uploaded on YouTube and the internet.

I urge you to watch the full concert (https://bitly.ws/37Tre) which includes film footage of a reunion the Prague survivors had some 50 years later with Winton, where we learn that although few of the children’s parents survived World War II, the rescued children and their descendants numbered more than 6,000 at the time of the reunion.

I was not aware of this heroic rescue before listening to Suchet’s narrative. It turns out there were more of these rescues, involving many more thousands of children, in what was called Kindertransports (transport of children), to get Jewish children out of harm’s way. Winton is remembered though because his rescue was almost a one-man mission, convincing British families to adopt the children and pay a bond for each child to the British government and then arrange for the children to be brought out of Prague.

There are many more similar stories that are not told, and retold, enough. Because of the film “Schindler’s List,” we know of the German industrialist Oskar Schindler, actually a card-carrying member of the Nazi party who employed Jews in his factory and, later as the Nazis expanded their “final solution” against the Jews, produced a list of 1,200 Jews that would allow them safe passage.

Meanwhile, in Asia, the Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937. That, combined with the events of 1938 in Europe, led Jews in the Philippines, some with close connections to President Manuel L. Quezon, to ask for the Philippines to help. Quezon started by allowing the entry of 26 Jews from Shanghai, for which he was heavily criticized by anti-semitic Americans who warned that the Jews might be communists. (We see how Red-tagging goes back decades, often an ill disguise for other prejudices, including anti-semitism and, in our times in the Philippines, against any kind of activism for justice.)

Quezon was unfazed by the criticism and went on to approve visas for 1,200 Jewish refugees to come to the Philippines, later to be known as the Manilaners. A 2018 film, “Quezon’s Game,” estimates that these Manilaners’ descendants numbered some 8,000.

Quezon would have wanted to bring over more Jews but the United States government, which had many anti-Semites, ordered Quezon to limit the visas to 1,000 a year. Then World War II broke out in full force and stopped the exodus of Jewish refugees.

It’s important to note when these rescues were taking place. Even before World War II broke out formally, there were already so many acts of Nazi aggression against other nations and against particular groups, notably the Jews, as early as the 1930s. Government bureaucrats, including those in the US, were slow to respond to the atrocities, sometimes because they were as anti-Jew as the Nazis.

We live now in similar, perilous times. The Uppsala Conflict Data Program in Sweden, which has the most comprehensive records of war, observes that in 2022 and 2023, the number of conflicts has reached an all-time high, leading The Atlantic Monthly writer Paul Poast to write: “We do not need to be in a world war to be in a world at war.”

In 2024, we need to keep an even more vigilant watch over these conflicts which, Poast observes, might not involve actual armed combat right away. Put another way, we have seen too many instances of “unpeace,” where the conditions to produce war, from social injustices to ethnic prejudices, might brew over months, or even years, before boiling over.

This observation is particularly relevant for the Philippines, on both the domestic and international fronts, of ceasefires, followed by new hostilities breaking out because of broken promises.

We have to be alert enough to respond to early signs of “unpeace” and quickly act when needed, taking our cues from the many examples in history of the power of good, often little acts that go a long way.

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mtan@inquirer.com.ph