Late Filipino president honored for saving Holocaust refugees

Raoul Wallenberg Foundation honors Manuel Quezon for saving more than 1,300 Jews fleeing the Nazis

By JTA 20 August 2015, 8:19 am

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President Manuel Quezon of the Philippines, November 1942. (Public domain/Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information, Photograph Collection, Library of Congress/Wikimedia)

The Raoul Wallenberg Foundation posthumously honored Philippines President Manuel L. Quezon for providing a haven in his country to more than 1,300 Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis.

In a ceremony Wednesday at Quezon Memorial Circle in Quezon City, Zenaida Quezon Avancena received the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation Medal on behalf of her father, Filipino media outlets reported.

Quezon, who led the Philippines from 1935 to 1944, was recognized for his “life-saving plan” and for “reaching out to the victims of the Nazi murderous machine.”

Effie Ben-Matityau, Israel’s ambassador to the Philippines, and Lee Blumenthal, board member of the Jewish Association of the Philippines, presented the medal. Several government officials, including President Benigno Aquino, attended the ceremony.

In a statement, the Wallenberg Foundation said Quezon had “wanted to absorb some 100,000 Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe,” but “his monumental project was thwarted by the outbreak of World War II and the Japanese invasion of the Philippines.”