Balai Quezon opens in Israel to honor PHL’s sheltering Holocaust refugees during WWII

DFA Undersecretary Ernesto Abella (second from left) and Ambassador to Israel Neal Imperial (third from right) unveil "Manuel L. Quezon in Spontanrealismus" at the newly inaugurated Balai Quezon in Tel Aviv. With then are (from left Israel Foreign Affairs Ministry official Yaron Mayer, Consul Shimon Weinbaum, and artist Celeste Lecaroz. Photo: DFA

A multipurpose center has been inaugurated in Tel Aviv, Israel to honor President Manuel L. Quezon’s open-door policy towards Holocaust refugees during the Second World War. 

Apart from being a resource center on this wartime policy, Balai Quezon (Quezon House) will also be the Embassy's Filipino Language and Culture Program for Filipino children born in Israel.

Quezon's policy was driven by a shared sense of humanity, “the idea that a people would shelter another for the simple reason that they believe in their basic right to exist and pursue a life of freedom and fulfillment," said Foreign Affairs Undersecretary for Strategic Communications and Research, Ernesto C. Abella.

Present at the inauguration along with diplomats and Israeli officials were Max Weissler and Margot Pins Kestenbaum, who were among the almost 1,300 Jewish refugees who lived in Manila and were saved from the state-sponsored mass imprisonment and killing of Jews in Europe during the war.

"[The open-door policy] remains the cornerstone of the deep and lasting friendship between the Philippines and Israel," Philippine Ambassador to Israel Neal Imperial said.

"It has been our dream, for the past five years, to find a place that would honor this special moment in history between our peoples,” he added. — Joviland Rita/BM, GMA News