How 'China's Schindler' safely shipped Jewish refugees to Shanghai

The heroic work of career diplomat Dr. Ho Feng-Shan was not fully uncovered until his death in 1997, but since then he has been dubbed the Chinese Schindler for the lives he saved during the Nazi holocaust. 

Posted to Austria in the late 1930s, Ho found himself in a country annexed by Nazi Germany. But as the Consul General for the Chinese consulate to Vienna, he was able to help Jews escape a terrible future.  

"We wouldn't be here if it weren't for Dr. Ho," admits Nancy Durlester DuBois. She's the daughter of Hedi Durlester, who received a visa from Ho. This sacred visa allowed the release of Hedi's father from jail and gave the family an opportunity to leave the country.

"My grandmother said she heard Dr. Ho at the consulate was giving away visas to get through," she tells CGTN. "So she stood in line there until she got the visa."  

While openly antagonistic to minorities including the Jews, the Nazi authorities would not let them leave without "proof of emigration" to move to another country – so Ho's visa to the open Chinese port of Shanghai was just the ticket.

Few countries accepted Jewish refugees – a 1938 conference, attended by 32 countries, failed to agree how to take people in. Shanghai became known as the "refuge of last resort," says Ho's daughter Manli, who has worked tirelessly to preserve his memory.

"No one wanted to go to Shanghai," she says. "The Japanese had just invaded, but the other foreign powers – the French, the Brits, the Americans – said they did not want to be inconvenienced by having the Japanese control the port and so the Japanese left the port open. And so my father knew that and took full advantage of that loophole."

"We would have perished," says Sidi Terner, who was only six years old when her mother received one of Ho's visas. "If we had no other exit visa, we would have been sent to a concentration camp. It's as simple as that."

It is not known precisely how many lives Ho saved, but well over 4,000 visas to Shanghai were issued by his consulate during his time there.

Today, a plaque embedded into the walls of the former Chinese consulate in Vienna commemorates his work for "helping Jews escape certain death at the hands of the Nazis."

"There was one line he said," says Manli. "Seeing the tragic plight of the Jews, it's natural to feel deep compassion and from a humanitarian standpoint to be impelled to help them – not because they were of any particular ethnic group, but what he did was to save human lives. And that is his legacy, I think, to us today."