Escape to Manila: From Nazi Tyranny to Japanese Terror

14. Reestablishing the Community

✦ 14 Reestablishing the Community morton i. netzorg, former executive secretary of the Jewish Refugee Committee in Manila, was liberated together with three thousand other internees at Santo Tomás Internment Camp on February 3, 1945. Also among the freed American Jews was Samuel Schechter, who had served as president of the Jewish community before the war.Ill,weak,and in no physical or emotional condition to reclaim the position, he was eager to head home to the United States. Netzorg was a natural leader, and as he was able to contact American refugee aid organizations through army communication channels, he became the person the Jews in Manila turned to. His younger son, David, who had joined the army as a civilian after Pearl Harbor, was taken prisoner after the fall of Bataan,survived the Death March,but died after reaching the O’Donnell prisoner of war camp in central Luzon in April 1942. In spite of this personal tragedy Morton Netzorg took over amidst the euphoria of liberation. Communicating with the outside world was still very difficult. As Netzorg wrote to Alex and Philip Frieder in Cincinnati, “You know a lot more than we do who are still pretty well cooped up. . . . The daily newspaper is limited to a single daily communiqué as to local events and most of the rest of our information is by word of mouth.” Netzorg then recounted what had happened in Manila, listed the names of those killed, and pleaded for help. Reestablishing the Community 167 He concluded with, “Our Jewish community was stricken desperately. So many have only the tears but no bread.”1 The Frieders also received a letter from Dudley Weinberg, a Jewish army chaplain who reached Manila shortly after the battle. He wrote, “I do not know what censorship regulations permit me to describe concerning what I have seen. In any case the newsreels will probably tell you what happened much more vividly than mere words could. Suffice it to say . . . that I have never seen such sadness, such destruction and such desolation. Pick up your bible and read the Book of Lamentations and you will have the story.”2 Weinberg , a graduate of Hebrew Union College, the center for Reform Judaism in Cincinnati, knew the Frieder family because they were active at the Rockdale Temple, where Alex Frieder had served as president.3 Battles were still raging in Manila and elsewhere during the last week of February 1945. On February 23, in a lightning raid by units of the 11th Airborne Division,more than two thousandAllied nationals were liberated from the Los Baños internment camp near the shores of Laguna de Bay—miles behind Japanese lines. Among those rescued were a dozen Polish Jews, including three Mirer Yeshiva students stranded in Manila on their way to San Francisco from Shanghai when war broke out. The liberated internees ended up in the Santo Tomás Internment Camp. In Muntinlupa Prison, east of Manila, the Japanese soldiers decided to kill all inmates serving a life term before they retreated to the hills. Included was Israel Konigsberg, whose life was spared in Fort Santiago by a Japanese man he had helped before the war. Japanese jailers came for Konigsberg, calling him from a roster, but there was no response. They threatened to take Filipino hostages if he did not step forward. Suddenly a prisoner called out to the Japanese and pointed to the corpse of a man who had died the night before, saying, “There he is.” The ruse worked and the Japanese scratched Konigsberg off the list and left. After liberation, the gaunt, starving Konigsberg managed to leave Muntinlupa Prison and with help from passing American soldiers made his way to the Santo Tomás Internment Camp, where his wife and daughter Rebecca found him.4 ✦ ✦ ✦ In New York, Moses A. Leavitt, secretary of the JDC, phoned the American Red Cross in Washington a few days after the liberation of Santo Tomás, and he followed up the phone call with a letter asking the Red Cross representative in Manila to find Rabbi Schwarz or Morton Netzorg.5 The Red Cross in Manila made contact with Morton Netzorg, and on 168 escape to manila March 10,1945,met with him and Rabbi Schwarz to go over a radiogram they received from Moses Leavitt that requested information about the needs of the Jews in Manila. On the basis...