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Chinese diplomat honored for saving thousands in Holocaust

by jayr_patron | May 19, 2008 at 09:54 pm | 132 views | add comment | 0 recommendations

Stories like this abound nowadays but they remain equally enthralling. It has made me wonder, what could have their parents, guardians, and/or mentors told them as they were growing up so that they put others ahead of themselves? Then I thought, maybe they were told that "the only way for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

The heroic actions of a Chinese diplomat who saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust by issuing visas for them to flee Austria are being honored in an exhibition at the US Congress.
Against the orders of his superiors, Feng Shan Ho, the Chinese consul-general in Vienna from 1937 to 1940, facilitated the safe departure of the Jews in the years immediately preceding the Second World War, including those sent to Nazi concentration camps.
Ho's extraordinary rescue efforts were not known until after his death in 1997 -- thanks to his reporter daughter's nose for news.