Rescue in the Philippines

Stand for Israel  |  April 27, 2021

Eight years ago, Typhoon Haiyan (one of the most powerful tropical storms ever recorded) devastated the Philippines, killing thousands and leaving many, many thousands more injured and homeless. As Rabbi Eckstein wrote in his final message, Israel is a country with a big heart, and the IDF sent much-needed aid to Israel’s Filipino friends.

But the relationship between the people of the Philippines and the Jewish state and Jewish people is not a new one. In the above documentary, we have a Holocaust rescue story, one in which the Philippines, with the help of cigar-maker brothers from Cincinnati and an American military officer named Dwight Eisenhower saved more than a thousand Jews from certain death at the hands of the Nazis.