Eric Lipetz

Jacques Lipetz (M / Belgium, 1932), Holocaust survivor

Leon Lipetz (M / Belgium, 1934), Holocaust survivor

Eric Lipetz (M / Belgium, 1936), Holocaust survivor

• KEYWORDS : <Refugees> <Philippines> -- <Israel>

USHMM Oral interviews

Jacques Lipetz, born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1932, describes being educated at a Jewish school; his family’s flight through France to Marseille in May 1940; going with his mother and two brothers to Lisbon, Portugal via Spain and his father went via Morocco; sailing to New York, NY in 1941 but not staying because their quota number had not come up yet; booking passage to the Philippines and landing in Manila in May or June 1941; their life as Belgian subjects under Japanese occupation; attending a private school run by the Christian Brothers and his religious education as a Sephardic Jew in a congregation dominated by Ashkenazic German Jews; antisemitic persecution by Filipino students; Japanese cultural attitudes and their treatment of foreigners and natives; how the Japanese brought civilian Jewish internees to High Holiday services; how a Japanese officer helped his brother get his scooter back from a German Nazi family; conditions in Manila towards the end of the war and liberation by Americans; Jewish chaplains holding a Passover Seder for the Jewish community at the Manila racetrack; going with his family to the United States in late 1945; and receiving a permanent visa five years later.

Eric Lipetz, a Holocaust survivor, born in 1936, discusses spending the war years with his family in the Philippines; marriage and children; living in Israel for a number of years; Jewish identity and faith; and impacts of the Holocaust.

Testimony of Jacques Lipetz

... The Jewish colony in Manila was a mixture of German Jews who hailed largely from Breslau and Frankfurt, a variety of other European Jews from Eastern Europe mainly, a number of Sephards from Lebanon, Syria and Iraq and us.

We were five Belgian Jews who escaped from Antwerp, fled through France, Spain and Portugal to arrive in the United States only to be told that we were not allowed to remain. Believing that the Philippine Islands were safe haven, we crossed the Pacific on a tramp Norwegian steamer, whose captain warned us regularly that there were German submarines in the area. We arrived in Manila in May 1941, to await our “quota number” . In December 1941 , the war became a world war, as on December 8 (our time) the Japanese entered the war with a vengeance.

We were my father Abraham then in his late 30’s my mother Gusta 10 years younger, I was 9, my brothers Leon 7 and Eric almost 6. We were in an adventure, but a very scary one. The language was strange and new, the climate hot and humid. We slept under tents of netting to avoid being totally devoured by mosquitoes.Of strange animals and insects there was no dearth.The food especially after the beginning of the occupation, consisted mainly of rice and fish. For variety we had fish and rice.

For a while it was safe, perhaps for my parents, but for me it was daily anxiety sometimes bordering on terror, Children my age who spoke English and no French, played a game they called football which did not resemble the game I knew in Belgium . Try as I might I found myself am outcast from the English speaking American children and from the German speaking Jewish children.They felt and said I was different.. and they were right.

We spent the years under Japanese occupation with increasing deprivation. Food became ever scarcer The occupying army more menacing and the hope of repatriation as neutrals never materialized. As Belgian citizens we were not kept long in the concentration camp we were clearly treated as enemy aliens.There was not, that I can remember, any overt anti Semitism by the Japanese despite urgings by the Nazi colony who were also in Manila. In other stories I will expand on these events.

My brothers and I were enrolled in a school run by Catholic brothers who did little to staunch the anti Semitism of the non-Jewish students. I remember being taunted about being a “Christ killer” I didn’t even know who “Christ” was. The Jewish students, and there were more than a few of us. were forced to be present during catechism class, and few opportunities were missed to offer us the chance of conversion.

There was a synagogue in Manila, Temple Emil founded some years earlier and housed in a yellow Moorish style building. It had a sanctuary, library classrooms and many of the things one would find in a synagogue in other parts of the world. We had a rabbi Joseph and a cantor, the wonderful chazzan Joseph Cysner who was a bachelor German refugee and lived with his mother. He was also our melamed and , even during, or rather between air raids, I remember taking two street cars to learn Chumash, hear music and talk to Mr. Cysner. The lesson I recall most clearly was an introduction to Rashi, his comment on the Genesis story where Joseph was thrown in the well and the well was empty ...