February 13, 2007

Dear Colleague:

    Mordecai Paldiel's new book "Diplomat Heroes of the Holocaust" is both inspiring and saddening: inspiring for what it contains and saddening for the fact that it doesn't contain more—that the book is so slim. Richard Holbrooke launched the book in January of this year at the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan. During the years of Nazi persecution, Holbrooke noted, Europe's embassies and consulates were filled with thousands of officials, but very few proved willing to toss aside protocol and instructions to save people threatened with death in the camps. Very few. How few? Well, the book documents only 29 cases. As a Chinese, I am proud to say that one of them is a Chinese—Feng Shan Ho. He was China's consul-general in Vienna at the time the Nazis annexed Austria. Feng took it upon himself to issue visas to Jews. Eventually, some 18,000 escaped to China, while others used their visas to escape to safety elsewhere. For his act of disobedience, Feng Shan Ho was first reprimanded, then deprived of his job (New York Times, 3 February, 2007, p. A12).

    To see how extraordinary Feng's act was, you have to know something about China—a civilization that lasted four thousand years because it was totally committed to harmony, and harmony could only be achieved if officialdom was sensitive to the people's needs and the people, for their part, looked up to officialdom for doing the right thing. And that's not all. For harmony to prevail over such a huge population, a skilled and dedicated bureaucracy was a necessity (Eienne Balazs, Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy, Yale University Press, 1964). In such a bureaucracy, tens of thousands of officials used ink and brush (demand for ink resulted in the deforestation of whole mountains) to record—no doubt in triplicates!—the social, economic, and geographical statistics that were required to keep society together. Bureaucracy is, in its nature, hierarchical. Policies are decided at the top and passed down to lower levels until they reach and are understood by the common people. Obedience is the key. Obedience is a harsh and unattractive word. In China, it worked to the degree that officialdom used not so much force or the threat of force as persuasive argument (hence the importance of having literate and even eloquent officials) to make the people see the point and comply. Nevertheless, a society as populous as China's would collapse into anarchy without the cult of obedience. Chinese children learn at an early age to obey parents, elders, and teachers—in short, people in authority.

    Feng must have imbibed, with his wet nurse's milk, the cult of obedience. As an adult, he must have followed the protocols of officialdom, made the right moves, to end up as Chinese consul-general in Vienna. So why did he discard all that he has personally gained to save Jews? What was there in it for him? How will sociobiology explain a hero like him? You will say, sociobiology is not interested in individuals. But therein lies its failure to comprehend fully humans and their society. In human society, in human history, individuals—saints and villains—have mattered and do matter. Does Feng matter? Who knows the degree he has affected the 18,000 Jews who escaped to China? And if he doesn't matter, why am I—sixty years after the event—writing about him and you reading about him?

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu