selection committee to choose those who would be granted visas by the U.S. State Department. By an application and review process, Jewish refugees in Germany and Austria obtained visas for immigration from U.S. consular officers who had been instructed by the U.S. State Department to issue visas based on recommendations from the JRC in Manila. This successful Frieder-McNutt selection rescue plan led to the larger resettlement rescue plan that focused on the island of Mindanao as a destination for the mass resettlement of 10,000 refugee Jews. For the refugees who did manage to settle in the Philippines, the JRC organised committees to aid in finding employment and new homes for them in Manila. Though relatively modest in numbers when compared to the number of refugees worldwide, the newly arrived refugees nearly overwhelmed the small Jewish community of Manila, multiplying its numbers relatively overnight. An ironic turn of events occurred when all rescue plans halted with the invasion and occupation of the Philippines during WWII. Japanese invasion Before the Attack on Pearl Harbor, more than 1,300 Jews from Europe had immigrated to the Philippines. The Jewish community of Manila reached its maximum population of about 2,500 members by the end of 1941, having increased eightfold since it first received refugees in 1937. This once American-dominated Jewish community that had saved the lives of well over 1300 European Jews from probable extermination in the Holocaust, faced an unexpected persecution of its own. An amazing turn of events put the fate of the American Jews into the hands of the German refugee Jews when the Japanese entered Manila in December 1941 and summarily interned all "enemy alien" civilians in University of Santo Tomas Internment Camp (STIC), and later at the Los Baños Internment Camp and the old Bilibid prison in Manila. The Japanese did not perceive a difference between German nationals and German Jews so the majority of the Jewish Community at Manila, hundreds of German and Austrian Jews, did not face internment at Santo Tomas University. However, about 250 other members of the Jewish community, including the more influential American members, were immediately incarcerated, as well as Americans of other faiths and "enemy alien" civilians. Having spent five years freeing hundreds of German Jews from Nazi oppression, the Manila American Jewish community now faced its own incarceration. Their fate was now in the hands of the German refugee Jews who aided their