It was my first assignment as an Israeli diplomat. I had been posted as the deputy consul general at the Israeli Consulate in Shanghai, China. I had known the city to have a vibrant and storied history of being the focus of competing empires, a center of international trade and entertainment.
But one story I never expected to hear in a place thousands of miles away from Israel was a tale of a man who saved thousands of Jews in the Holocaust.
Ho Feng-Shan was China’s consul general at its consulate in Vienna, Austria from 1937 to 1940. For the majority of his life, Ho’s good deeds remained unknown, and only came to light following his death in 1997.