Even at the age of seven, Lotte Hershfield knew her world was crumbling.
She avoided the benches with the sign: No dogs or Jews allowed. She couldn’t attend public schools. And the Nazis and their growling German shepherds raided her family’s house, throwing their books into a fire.
As a child, “we were very aware,” said Hershfield, now 84. Jews weren’t welcome in their own home.
Growing increasingly fearful, her parents and her older brother left their hometown of Breslau, Germany, in 1938 and journeyed to an unlikely new home — the Philippines.
About 1,200 European Jews fled to the Philippines from 1937 to 1941, escaping the throes of the Nazis only to face another bloody war under Japanese occupation.
Many of the Jews came from Austria and Germany, as the anti-Semitic policies including the Nuremberg race laws intensified. Unable to immigrate to countries like the United Kingdom and the United States, thousands of Jews escaped to places like Shanghai in China, Sousa in the Dominican Republic and Manila.
Those who arrived in Manila didn’t realize that they had escaped the Holocaust only to be caught in the war in the Eastern front, where the Philippines came under attack.
“We were going from the frying pan to the fire,” Hershfield said. “We went from Nazi persecutors to the Japanese.”
Categories: Asia, Belief, Philippines