My Brother's Keeper

CHAPTER 1

FENG SHAN HO

Riding triumphantly at the head of his motorcade, German Führer Adolf Hitler is saluted by crowds of admirers as he arrives in Vienna to claim Austria for Nazi Germany.

(CREDIT: DEUTSCHES BUNDESARCHIV)

"He saved us. It was a miracle."

ADOLF HITLER STOOD erect in a gleaming convertible limousine as it rolled steadily through the broad, tree-lined avenues of Vienna, Austria. It was Monday, March 14, 1938. On both sides of Hitler's parade route, held in check by helmeted German troops, exultant crowds of Austrian civilians packed the sidewalks, cheering, "Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!" In the Austrian countryside far to the west, meanwhile, convoys of German tanks and trucks advanced deep into Austria from the German border. After scheming for years to engineer a German annexation or Anschluss of neighboring Austria, Hitler—the German Führer or dictator—had ordered a military invasion of Austria on the pretext of maintaining order—and had managed to conquer Austria without firing a shot. Now—with the joyful approval of many pro-German Austrians—Hitler had come to the capital city to claim his prize—the nation of Austria.¹

At Vienna's Heldenplatz—Heroes' Square—more than two hundred thousand Austrians greeted the Führer as a triumphant conqueror, shouting their allegiance to the expanded Nazi state and waving miniature red-white-and-black flags bearing the spiderlike Nazi swastika. Attired in a khaki-colored German army uniform and an officer's cap, Hitler dismounted from his limousine, responded to the ecstatic masses with a well-practiced salute, and strode confidently toward Hofburg Palace to deliver a victorious balcony speech beneath huge Nazi banners. As he proclaimed the benefits of wiping Austria off the map and converting it to a German province, the excited masses in Heroes' Square roared their approval.²

One who did not cheer, and who watched the spectacle with silent disapproval, was a Chinese diplomat, Dr. Feng Shan Ho, the first secretary of the Chinese embassy in Vienna. Ho had joined China's diplomatic mission to Austria less than a year earlier, representing the Republic of China under Nationalist leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. To Ho's dismay the generalissimo admired Hitler, purchased arms for China from Nazi Germany, and had even sent one of his sons to Germany, where he had joined the Nazi army and was serving as a junior officer in the Austrian occupation. Despite China's official friendship with Nazi Germany, Ho privately considered the Nazis to be "devils" and deeply distrusted Adolf Hitler. Observing the German Führer in person, Ho was unimpressed: Hitler, he concluded, was a "short little man" with a "ridiculous moustache" who behaved like "an unspeakable martinet."³

Feng Shan Ho was a Chinese Christian. He was born in China's Hunan Province in 1901. When he was seven years old his father died, leaving the family in desperate poverty. Lutheran missionaries from Norway who were ministering in Hunan Province provided critical assistance to Ho's family and befriended the young boy. Eventually Ho professed faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and began what would become a lifetime association with the Chinese Lutheran Church. Bright, determined, and compassionate, he attended Lutheran schools as a boy, and received a Western-style college education in China, graduating from Yale University through a Chinese extension program. Afterward he managed to travel to Germany to do postgraduate work at the University of Munich. In 1932 he graduated magna cum laude with a doctorate in political economics. It was while studying in Germany that Ho became a witness to Adolf Hitler's remarkable rise to power.⁴

In the opening decade of the twentieth century, Hitler was a high school dropout and teenage loafer—a self-styled artist who evaded ordinary jobs to peddle his mediocre artworks on the streets of Vienna. Even though he was Austrian, he idolized neighboring Germany, and joined the German army in the First World War. As a German infantryman and corporal, he finally found a purpose in life—a fanatical devotion to Germany's war effort. His zeal earned him an Iron Cross medal for boldly carrying military dispatches under fire, and he was deeply distressed when the war ended in a German surrender. Afterward, he joined a radical nationalistic workers' party—and quickly displayed an extraordinary talent for political intrigue, mesmerizing speech-making, and ruthless leadership. He renamed the fledgling organization the National Socialist German Workers' Party—the Nazis—organized a thuggish gang of storm troopers, and adopted the ancient swastika as the symbol of an anti-Semitic, Germanic master race.⁵

In 1923, amid the political turmoil of postwar Germany, Hitler bungled an attempt to transform a Munich beer hall rally into a fascist revolution and was convicted of treason. He spent eight months in prison, but it proved to be the experience that catapulted him to power. Incarcerated by the government in a comfortable prison suite, he had ample time to write a laborious autobiographical rant entitled Mein Kampf (My Struggle). It blamed Germany's desperate postwar conditions on the war's victors, the Communist Party, and Germany's Jews. Unexpectedly it became a German best seller, and elevated Hitler to the national stage. It also became the bible for the Nazi Party.⁶

In the early 1930s, while Feng Shan Ho was studying in Munich, Hitler surprised Europe by emerging as dictator of a powerful, resurgent Germany. Except for his peculiar, riveting pale-blue eyes, Hitler was physically unimpressive, with a pallid complexion, slicked-down dark hair, and a faddish toothbrush mustache. He had developed his dramatic oratorical skills to a fever pitch, however, and could incite German audiences to ecstatic or angry frenzy. Funded by opportunistic industrialists and fueled by a diabolical but effective propaganda machine, Hitler's Nazi Party won increasingly large blocs of seats in Germany's parliament, the Reichstag, until Hitler attained the post of German chancellor. In 1933, when a suspicious fire ravaged the building housing the German national legislature, Hitler exploited public fears to obtain legislation granting him unprecedented power as chancellor. He then quickly and ruthlessly outlawed all other political parties, raised up a brown-shirted paramilitary force called the Sturmabteilung, or "storm troopers," and jailed, exiled, or murdered more than two hundred political opponents. In 1934, with no one left to seriously challenge him, Adolf Hitler combined the offices of chancellor and president to become the dictator, or Führer, of Nazi Germany.⁷

By then Dr. Ho was pursuing a career in the Chinese diplomatic corps, and in 1937 he was promoted to the post of first secretary at the Chinese embassy in Vienna. Personally energetic and capable, Ho was good-humored, witty, and gifted with a diplomat's skills, but was also known as a man of character who was committed to defending what he believed was right. In appearance he was distinguished-looking: dark-haired, mannerly, well-groomed, and given to European attire. He and his wife were well received within the Austrian capital's diplomatic community and by the city's intelligentsia. Among their numerous friends were respected members of Vienna's large Jewish community. Partially because of his concern for the welfare of the nation's Jews, Ho was alarmed and appalled at the outpouring of public support for Hitler and the Nazi takeover of Austria. Hitler had openly expressed his anti-Semitic racism in Mein Kampf, describing a Jew as the "parasite of the nations" and "a vampire" who "drags everything that is truly great into the gutter." By 1938 Hitler and the Nazis dominated all of German life. Even elementary school children were taught to say of the Führer: "I shall always obey you, like father and mother."⁸

With their country now a province of Germany, Austria's 185,000 Jews were in obvious peril. German laws denying citizenship to Jews and restricting their freedom were now applied to the Jews of Austria. Hitler's storm troopers and his secret police force, the Gestapo, stopped Jewish men and women on the street in Vienna and put them to work scrubbing sidewalks and cleaning street gutters. Jewish children were ordered to sweep the city's wide avenues. Jewish society matrons and business leaders were ordered to clean Vienna's public toilets and the latrines in the Gestapo barracks. At a park in Vienna, Nazi storm troopers pulled Jews from the streets and forced them to eat grass until they became ill. Influenced by Nazi law and propaganda, non-Jews who had been friends, neighbors, and business associates for decades now stopped on the streets to jeer and taunt the Jews. Thousands of Jews were jailed and their property was looted by Nazi officials, troops, and police. "I myself," recalled a foreign journalist, "watched squads of [storm troopers] carting off silver, tapestries, paintings and other loot."⁹

Ominously, a hundred miles west of Vienna at Mauthausen, the Nazis began building a concentration camp like those rumored to exist in Germany. Since 1933 Nazi Germany had pursued a policy of judenrein—a "cleansing" of Jews from Germany—and almost one-fourth of Germany's Jewish population had fled the nation. The Nazis' euphemistically named Central Office for Jewish Emigration would reportedly allow "noncriminal" Jews to leave the country if they transferred all their property and finances to the German government—and if they were issued an official entry visa by a foreign nation. Many nations would not accept Jewish refugees, and even Western nations such as Great Britain and the United States severely limited Jewish immigration. In July 1938, delegates from thirty-two countries assembled at the French resort city of Évian-les-Bains to discuss the status of immigrant refugees. Among the countries of the Western world represented at the Évian Conference, only the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica offered to increase immigration quotas to accept Jewish refugees. Influenced by worries about the Great Depression and the US State Department's diplomatic concerns, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the US Congress rejected pleas to allow significant numbers of Jewish refugees to enter the United States. Other major Western nations also refused.¹⁰

"If I had never knocked on that door in Vienna, I would have been in a concentration camp."

Meanwhile, when Austria was absorbed into Germany, most staffers at the Chinese embassy in Vienna were transferred to China's Berlin embassy. The former Austrian embassy was designated as a consulate, and thirty-seven-year-old Feng Shan Ho was officially appointed as its consul-general. Although he was left with a single trusted associate, Dr. Ho saw the change as an opportunity to save Austria's persecuted Jews. Courageously, he began issuing visas that allowed Austrian and German Jews to resettle in the Chinese city of Shanghai. Officially, the Chinese government did not require a visa to immigrate to Shanghai, but Ho figured the Nazis did not know that—and Germany required a visa for Jews to leave the country. He also knew that most of the Jewish refugees would not go to Shanghai—they would use the visas to flee Germany and seek asylum wherever they could find it. So Ho began signing and issuing visas—a few at first. Then dozens. And hundreds. And eventually thousands.¹¹

He contacted American Christian ministries in Austria, which helped him notify the country's Jewish community. Austria's Jews spread the word: If you can get to the Chinese consulate in Vienna, you can get exit visas for yourself and your family—even dozens at a time. Ho understood the risks. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and China's foreign service office were cultivating Hitler as a friend and Nazi Germany as an ally. Issuing a flood of visas to Austrian and German Jews so they could escape Hitler and the Nazis would potentially infuriate Ho's superiors, threaten his diplomatic career, and even endanger his life. It was a risk Ho was willing to take. Quietly, he sent his wife and their eleven-year-old son safely out of the country, then began working day and night to issue visas to Jews. Why was he willing to risk so much? "He knew he had received many gifts from God," Ho's Lutheran pastor would later observe. "He felt that they were not given to him solely for his own benefit, but to do for others."¹²

Long, winding lines of Austrian Jews formed at the entrance to Vienna's Chinese consulate. Thugs from the SS and the Gestapo harassed those who were waiting, sometimes dragging Jewish men aside and beating them. But day after day, the lines continued to form, and one after another, Austria's Jews were issued lifesaving Chinese visas. One of them was Hans Kraus, a Jewish surgeon, who lined up with the throng outside the Chinese consulate for almost a week. The crowd was so large and the wait so long that he feared he would be arrested before he and his family could obtain visas. Then one day he saw Ho's official car pull up to the consulate gate. The automobile's windows were down, so Kraus desperately tossed his completed visa application form inside the vehicle. A few days later, he received a telephone call from the Chinese consulate notifying him that his visa was in the mail. Soon, the lifesaving documents arrived, enabling Kraus and his family to escape from Nazi Germany.¹³

Ho's dangerous attempt to thwart Nazi persecution of Austrian Jews was not confined to his consulate office. Several times he confronted Gestapo agents as they attempted to arrest his Jewish friends. He also made regular visits to the homes of Jewish families he knew in the hope that a relationship with a foreign diplomat would protect them. Once, Gestapo agents attempted to arrest one of his Jewish friends while Ho was visiting his home, but backed down when Ho boldly presented his diplomatic credentials and insisted they leave. In another case Ho learned that his Jewish friend Karl Doron had been arrested and imprisoned at the notorious Dachau concentration camp. Ho issued a visa for Doron and officially demanded that he be freed. Surprisingly, Nazi officials complied with the request, and Doron became one of the few Jewish inmates released from Dachau.¹⁴

One of the Jews helped by Ho, Eric Goldstaub of Vienna, had visited dozens of foreign consulates in search of a visa, only to be turned away. Then he heard about Feng Shan Ho and the Chinese consulate, where he received visas for himself and his entire extended family, which numbered twenty. Before the family could leave, however, Goldstaub and his father were arrested by Nazi agents. But when they saw the Goldstaubs' Chinese visas, the Nazis let the family go. "If I had never knocked on that door in Vienna, I would have been in a concentration camp," Goldstaub later concluded. "And I would have died.… Our whole family would have died. We needed Feng Shan Ho. He saved us. It was a miracle."¹⁵

For almost two years, Feng Shan Ho issued an average of five hundred visas every month. At least once he issued more than a hundred in a single day. Eventually the Chinese government learned of the flood of Jewish visas being issued by China's Vienna consulate, and Ho received an angry telephone call from the Chinese ambassador to Germany. Ho's actions threatened China's official relationship with Nazi Germany, the ambassador warned him, and he ordered him to close down his visa mill. Realizing that his rescue operation might soon be shut down, Ho ignored the order and sped up his activities. Soon an official from Berlin appeared unannounced at the Vienna consulate and informed Ho that he was suspected of selling visas. Ho forcefully denied the charges, and the official left. Ho waited for another reprimand or a recall to China, but he heard nothing—so he continued to issue visas at a frantic pace. Eventually Nazi officials became suspicious and confiscated the consulate building, claiming it was Jewish property. When the Chinese government refused to lease a replacement, Ho used personal funds to rent a new office and continued to issue visas. Finally, in the spring of 1939, the Chinese government officially censured him, and soon afterward ordered his transfer to a different diplomatic post. By then, however, Japan had invaded China, and as Japan's Axis partner, Germany was no longer viewed as a Chinese ally. Ho had no choice: he had to leave—but he continued to issue Jewish visas until the end.¹⁶

Ho held other diplomatic posts during World War II, and continued to serve Nationalist China even after Mao Zedong's Communists won the Chinese Civil War and forced Chiang Kai-shek's government to flee to Taiwan. Ho's campaign to save Austria's Jews left a shadow over his career, however, and after forty years of dedicated service, he was censured and dismissed by his government. He moved to the United States, where he continued to be active in the Chinese Lutheran Church. In 1997 he died at age ninety-six. His dangerous, heroic efforts to assist the Jews of Austria were known to but a few, and the humble former diplomat seldom told others about his deadly drama in Vienna. "I thought it was only natural to feel compassion, and want to help," he said simply. Some who escaped Nazi terror with Ho's help eventually made a remarkable calculation: thanks to Dr. Feng Shan Ho's courageous actions, more than twelve thousand Jews escaped the Holocaust.¹⁷