Feng Shan Ho

Dr. Feng Shan Ho is known for what he did during the Holocaust by saving thousands of Austrian Jews.

Ho Feng-Shan was born on 10 September 1901 in  China. He was a hard-working student and attended the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1929 and got his doctorate in political economics in 1932. In 1935, he started his diplomatic career in the Republic of China with the Foreign Ministry and his first post was in Turkey. In 1937, he became the First Secretary at the Chinese legation (which is like an embassy) in Vienna. In 1938 when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany, the legation became a consulate, and Ho was assigned the post of Consul-General.

At the time, Austria had approximately 185,000 Jews, the third-largest Jewish community in Europe. In 1938, the Nazis invaded Austria and started persecuting the Jews. Nazis required Jews to have entry visas or boat tickets in order to go to another country. Since other nations wouldn’t accept Jewish refugees, the Austrians had nowhere to go.

Dr. Ho risked his life, went against orders, and gave many Jewish people visas to Shanghai China. Anyone who requested a visa to Shanghai was given one, even if they wanted to travel elsewhere but needed a visa to leave. Many did go to Shanghai either by boat from Italy or by land through the Soviet Union. Others used their visas to go to places like Palestine or the Philippines.

Dr. Ho spent 40 years as a diplomat in Egypt, Mexico, Bolivia, and Colombia before retiring to San Francisco. He was an unknown hero of WWII when he died in 1997 at the age of 96.

It was only after his death that evidence by survivors who benefited from his help surfaced. The Commission for the Designation of the Righteous decided to award Dr. Ho the title of Righteous Among the Nations for his humanitarian efforts in giving Chinese visas to Jews in Vienna in spite of orders that told him not to do this. On September 12, 2015, he was also awarded the President’s Citation Award from the Taiwanese President.