Global Transit, Imperial Performativity, and Survival: European Jewish Refugees in the Philippines Under US Tutelage and Japanese Occupation, 1937–1946

Abstract By late 1941, some 1,300 Jews had escaped from National Socialist-controlled Europe to the Philippines. This essay problematizes the existing historiography on this rescue by going beyond examinations of its mechanisms and the politics of memory. Instead, it introduces a rereading of the refugees’ struggles by focusing on their continued being-in-transit and mandated imperial performativity, which allows for analysing transnational spaces shaped by their seemingly mundane everyday practices, from walking to cooking. During the early years, American, Filipino, and Jewish community leaders expected the performance of imperial norms and policed interactions between the refugees and native Filipinos. Some of the refugees succeeded. Some even managed to open shops. Others failed or rebelled and soon found themselves in peril. The late 1941 invasion by Japanese forces subjected Philippine society to new racial hierarchies. Jewish refugees, suspected of collaborating with the enemy, had to engage in different imperial performances in order to survive. By late 1946, many Jewish survivors had managed to leave, mostly to the United States, where they encountered new challenging power asymmetries of a different kind.