Manli Ho (second right) last month in front of the plaque commemorating her father in Vienna, together with (from left) Hu Bin, counselor from the Permanent Mission of China to the UN in Vienna, Ambassador Zvi Heifetz of Israel, Ambassador Zhao Bin of China and Hu Lian, head of the special delegation from Yiyang, Hunan province.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Tracing the history

Yet during my father's lifetime, not even we, his family, realized the full scope of what he had done. It was only after his death that I began by chance to uncover my father's deeds.

Trying to retrace this history more than six decades later, however, was like looking for a pebble in the ocean. We shall never learn the full extent of my father's humanitarian efforts.

There was no "Schindler's List" of names. After the war, the survivors had scattered all over the world. Most of the adults who lined up in front of the Chinese consulate to obtain visas were gone, and did not necessarily tell their children the details of how the family escaped.

At the end of World War II, China was plunged into a civil war. There were few Chinese archival documents left to be found.

Nevertheless, I doggedly looked for survivors and painstakingly scoured archives in Washington DC, Vienna and Israel. Little by little, through sheer persistence and serendipity, I was able to fill in much of the history piece by piece.

Posted to Vienna, Austria in 1937, my father was appointed China's consul general in April 1938, one month after the Anschluss. He witnessed the reign of terror that was unleashed against Jews following the Nazi takeover.

Many Jews from Austria and Germany tried to emigrate, but found almost no country willing to allow them entry. Their plight was further exacerbated by the July 13, 1938 resolution of the Evian Conference, which made it evident that almost none of the 32 participating nations was willing to accept Jewish refugees.

To force Jews to emigrate, the Nazis instituted methods combining coerced expulsion and economic expropriation. Nazi authorities told Jews that if they showed proof of emigration - such as an entry visa with an end destination - they, as well as relatives deported to concentration camps, would be allowed to leave.

In his memoir, Forty Years of My Diplomatic Life, my father would later write: "Since the Anschluss, the persecution of Jews by Hitler's 'devils' became increasingly fierce...I spared no effort in using any means possible to help, thus saving countless Jews!"