By CARL HOFFMAN
The overall theme of this year's events celebrating the under-recognized relationship between Israel and the Philippines is "Golden Years of Friendship and Care - Building on Common Values."
These festive events and activities will both celebrate 50 years of cordial relations between the two countries, and commemorate the fact that the Philippines was one of the few countries in the world to open its doors to Jews fleeing the Holocaust in Europe.
The full slate of events began last month with the participation of the Philippines in an international Purim parade in Holon, and will culminate in November with the installation and unveiling of a monument at the Holocaust Memorial Park in Rishon Lezion, memorializing the Philippines' role in saving Jews during the Holocaust and the long, yet little-known, relationship between Jews and the Philippines.
Jews in the Philippines
Although William Walton Brown was not really the mayor of Manila, he may as well have been. Cutting an imposing figure at almost 136 kg and always dressed immaculately in expensive three-piece suits, a diamond stick pin in his tie and a fresh rare orchid in his lapel, Brown was given the nickname "Mayor" by no less a personage than Admiral George Dewey, commander of US naval forces in Asia.
The two had met during Brown's first arrival in the Philippines at the start of the Spanish-American War in 1898, when Brown hitched a ride on Dewey's flagship from Hong Kong to the Spanish colonial city of Manila. Anticipating the most urgent needs of the invading American troops, Brown watched the sinking of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay and then hurriedly contacted his business partners in New York, telling them to begin shipping liquor and beer immediately. Thanks to Brown's shrewd business acumen, US soldiers were raising glasses of American beer all over Manila before the American flag was raised over the Spanish governor's headquarters at Fort Santiago.
After the war and throughout the early years of the American colonial period, Brown built a huge personal fortune by supplying the US military forces with everything from uniforms to medals, by opening the popular Alhambra Saloon, and by trading in coal through Japanese shipping companies.
Brown was enormously popular among the foreign community of Manila during these years, due largely to his anonymous charities, his lavish open house and garden parties, and a lifestyle that contemporaries described as "Rabelaisian." The stuff of legend even during his lifetime, Brown was said to have calmly watched his own appendicitis operation - without anesthesia - as reflected in the surgeon's eyeglasses.
For 30 years, right up to his death in 1928, William Walton Brown was one of the most prominent and powerful men in Manila. On top of that, he was Jewish. His small, unobtrusive tombstone stands today in the midst of Manila's tiny Jewish cemetery, marked simply "'Mayor' W.W. Brown."
The history of the Jewish Diaspora is interesting not only because of the large and important Jewish communities established in such places as Spain, Germany, Poland and the US, but also for the myriad number of smaller Jewish settlements turning up in places one would least expect to find them - places like the Philippines, far beyond the frontiers of the Jewish world.
Although never large or particularly noticeable, the Jewish presence there has been surprisingly long. Small numbers of Marranos, or crypto-Jews, fleeing the Spanish Inquisition during the 16th-18th centuries, were followed in the 19th century by both Alsatian Jews fleeing the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War and Syrian Jews fleeing persecution in Damascus.
This is just Part 1 of the article.
If you're interested here are the other parts.
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
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So the Philippines opened its doors to the Jews during the holocaust. Even before then, at the infancy of our country, humanity and compassion were ever present within Filipinos.
"We have a nice friendship, you and us. We sheltered your people during the Holocaust, and we're sorry we couldn't save more. We voted for the creation of your country in 1947. And now we are over here, taking care of your grandparents. Is that not what friends are for?"
