In response to an Arutz-7 report last Thursday regarding the Righteous Gentile Dr. Feng Shan Ho, several readers asked why it was necessary for him to issue visas to Shanghai, when Shanghai was actually an open city that did not require visas. As we reported, "Nazi policy [in Vienna in 1938-9] was not to deport Jews who could show they had visas to foreign countries, and Dr. Ho, disregarding instructions from his superior, the Chinese Ambassador in Berlin, issued visas to Shanghai to all requesting them."
Elaborating on this point, Dr. Lotte Marcus, one of the thousands of Viennese Jews who arrived in Shanghai between 1938 and 1941, writes as follows on the University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies website::
"Dr. Ho... happened to be visiting two Jewish friends for dinner [on the day of Kristallnacht] when he witnessed the brutal arrival of two Gestapo agents who had come to take the husband away to one of the labor camps. It was at this moment that Dr. Ho changed from Consul to rescuer. He had the wit, the courage, the audacity to intervene. He confronted the Gestapo and curtly said, "You cannot take this man because he is going to Shanghai and we are just now discussing the papers he'll need which I am going to approve for a Visa!" ... From that moment on, Dr. Ho must have begun to realize how excruciating a power fate had arbitrarily placed in his hands; it was not the visa to GET TO Shanghai that was important; the visa was crucial in order for persons to be able to LEAVE the country!"
Elaborating on this point, Dr. Lotte Marcus, one of the thousands of Viennese Jews who arrived in Shanghai between 1938 and 1941, writes as follows on the University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies website:
"Dr. Ho... happened to be visiting two Jewish friends for dinner [on the day of Kristallnacht] when he witnessed the brutal arrival of two Gestapo agents who had come to take the husband away to one of the labor camps. It was at this moment that Dr. Ho changed from Consul to rescuer. He had the wit, the courage, the audacity to intervene. He confronted the Gestapo and curtly said, "You cannot take this man because he is going to Shanghai and we are just now discussing the papers he'll need which I am going to approve for a Visa!" ... From that moment on, Dr. Ho must have begun to realize how excruciating a power fate had arbitrarily placed in his hands; it was not the visa to GET TO Shanghai that was important; the visa was crucial in order for persons to be able to LEAVE the country!"