Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial will soon honor a former diplomat of the Republic of China, Ho Feng-shan (
Taiwanese officials, however, will not be allowed to attend the ceremony due to opposition from Ho's family for what they described as the government's failure to clear a black mark against Ho's name.
Officials from China, instead, will attend the ceremony scheduled to take place in Jerusalem on Jan. 23, sources said.
"The reason why the government of Taiwan is not invited to the ceremony [by Ho's family] is because they are unwilling to clear his name," Ho's son Ho Mon-to (
"If Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs [MOFA] and Control Yuan had taken my advice and cleared my father's name earlier, MOFA would not be faced with the embarrassment of being unable to attend the ceremony," Ho added.
Yang Rung-tsao (
"It is true that I have not received an invitation," Yang said.
Yad Vashem will posthumously award Ho, consul-general of China in Vienna between 1938 and 1940, the title of "Righteous Among the Nations," given to gentiles who helped Jews during the Holocaust.
Disregarding instructions from his superior, ROC ambassador in Berlin Chen Chieh (陳介), Ho issued thousands of visas to China to everyone who requested them while working in Nazi-occupied Austria, according to related records.
Menashe Zipori, Director of the Israeli Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei, said the award represents appreciation for Ho's heroic and humanitarian deeds. "Ho helped Jews acquire Chinese visas which allowed them to emigrate to China, or at the very least to leave Austria," Zipori said.
Hero and criminal at the same time?
And although the people of Taiwan take pride in Ho's courage, his name is tainted with an impeachment for embezzlement in 1985. Ho was accused by a former subordinate and charged with embezzling US$300, along with other minor counts. Ho was already retired, living in the US, and refused to return to Taiwan to defend his name, foreign ministry officials said.
Reflecting on the life of his father, who died in 1997, Ho Mon-to said: "How can a man be a hero and a criminal at the same time?"
Ho sent his father's point-by-point rebuttal against the charges along with his father's autobiography, entitled My Forty Year Career (外交生涯四十年), to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Control Yuan in April and formally requested both government agencies to re-examine the case.
But his request was rejected. "MOFA said it was not their business and that it could not be handled by the Control Yuan either because they would need new evidence before they could re-open the case," Ho said.
Ho further pointed out what he termed a "contradictory" stance by the Taiwan government on the issue.
"On the one hand, the government of Taiwan wants to share his honor. But on the other, it refuses to clear his name," he said.
Separate issues
Yang, however, said the two issues were unrelated.
"Ho issued visas to Jews from 1938 to 1940. His subordinate accused him of corruption in the early 1970s. The two issues are separate and should not be linked together," Yang said.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Hung-mao (
Tien said the ministry would continue to communicate with Ho's family about the issue of MOFA not being invited to attend the ceremony.
Ho Mon-to, however, said he disagreed with Tien.
"The two issues are related, especially as far as MOFA is concerned," Ho said, adding that if the ministry had helped him clear his father's name, Taiwanese officials would have been invited to the upcoming ceremony.
Ministry tries to downplay the case
Meanwhile, an internal MOFA document dated Dec. 27, written by the ministry's department of information and cultural affairs and addressed to the department of West Asian affairs, suggested that the ministry should downplay the event in fear the local media would "overly exagerrate" aspects of the issue.
"So far, only the international media has shown concern for the case and the Communist Chinese media has extremely exaggerated (
Critics, however, took a slightly different line.
"It is logically flawed to say that someone who has done a great deed during World War II would never do anything wrong later on," said Lin Feng-jeng (林峰正), president of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights.
Lin said he didn't consider the foreign minister's remark to be improper, nor was the Control Yuan's rejection to re-open the case unreasonable.
But the human rights activist offered a piece of advice for Ho's family. "Perhaps Ho's children can try to push this issue into the media spotlight so as to pressure the government to re-open the case," Lin said.
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