Screen shot, Quezon’s Game 2019
The Rescue In The Philippines
The film Quezon’s Game was made right before the world was put on pause due to a pandemic.
One of its goals is to tell the world about the forgotten and largely untold story of how the Filipino people saved over twelve hundred Jews (more than those saved by Schindler). A novel virus, the kind which comes every hundred years tried to stop the world from finding out.
But If There’s A Will, There’s A Way
This film is available to watch online for free. It tells of how before the start of WWII, Filipino President Manuel L. Quezon (played in the movie by Raymond Bagatsing), risked it all to rescue over 1,200 Jewish people from the Holocaust at a time when almost every country have closed their borders and were turning European Jewish refugees away.
10,000 Jews
President Quezon’s original plan was to save 10,000 and even up to a million Jews, and have them permanently housed in Mindanao, Southern Philippines.
But as a U.S. Commonwealth, the U.S. government decided the Philippines cannot take in more than the immigrant quotas set for them per year, and certainly not for Jews, and German Jews at that.
Yet President Quezon and the Filipino people came through with one of their shining moments, and helped changed the minds of U.S. policy makers and politicians about this humanitarian act. Puso in Tagalog.
People Power
From across the Pacific, the Filipino people rallying around Quezon forced the hand of the U.S. government to agree with Quezon’s “Open Door Policy” of giving sanctuary to thousands of Jews. The U.S. State Department gave in and allowed the Philippines to take in a thousand Jews every year for 10 years. The Philippines can take as much as they can after that time. They could, as the United States would have granted them their independence.
The first thousand plus the number of the remaining visa quotas for the first year were able to make their way to Manila before the war in the Pacific took place and then the rest of the plan was stymied. There were already a few hundred Jewish refugees taken in by the Philippines by way of other means prior to the main group arriving.
Some of the refugees (known as the Manilaners) had to be billeted in a lot owned by the Quezons in Marikina (northeast of Manila) and various other places. The entire plan just came to a halt when the Japanese invaded the Philippines in 1941, and with the main players leaving the country and President Quezon himself succumbing to an illness while on exile right before the war ended.
Quezon’s Game – Soundtrack/Trailer
Full Movie
https://www.bilibili.tv/en/video/2007485585
“The Last Manilaners” Documentary Trailer
In April 23rd, 1940 during the inauguration of Marikina Hall — a camp for the displaced refugees (a lot owned by the Quezons), President Manuel L. Quezon speaking to the Jewish Refugees in attendance on the occasion said “It is my hope and, indeed, my expectation that the people of the Philippines will have in the future every reason to be glad that when the time of need came, their country was willing to extend a hand of welcome.” These same words are now engraved in the Open Doors Monument in Israel.
Footnote
The whole world, if not all Filipinos need to watch the film Quezon’s Game, and understand that when everyone else turned their backs on the Jews, their parents and grandparents, stepped up, and went against the tide and the hate to do the right thing.
Yet, no one has bothered to tell others about this little known fact, and it has not become common knowledge even after 80 years have passed. If we keep quiet or wait any longer, this might be totally forgotten.
Today, Filipinos and some of the politicians they elect do not even want to speak up or take a stand as another European tyrant is invading and killing the people of Ukraine.
It is ironic that the reason given by the Americans back in those days that they do not want to grant the Philippines independence just yet is because the Filipino people needed a hundred years to mature and make American democracy work for them. But they were right all along.
The Filipinos are a forgiving people, they are kind hearted and all those good things, but they aren’t really mature enough to elect their nation’s leaders. Many Filipinos today hate Quezon and all the Filipino nationalists who wanted independence from the United States but the very freedom they have was because Quezon and other great Filipinos, fought against America, Spain and Japan for national independence — like every people on earth would.
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People all over the world think they know who and what the Filipino is all about. Guess what, Filipinos themselves do not know who they really are. Together let us find out all about them and figure out who they really are.
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