The forgotten German who saved Jews in Japan - and the diary that resurfaced 80 years later

Renate Quastler, born in Stuttgart in 1933, kept a secret diary filled with drawings, photographs and everyday observations while living in Japan during World War II. The diary, written in German, was started as a young girl and remained hidden until after her death over 80 years later. It provides a unique glimpse into the life of a Holocaust refugee child who had no awareness of her Jewish identity.

In Japan, Renate's father Ernst Quastler, a Jewish refugee, worked as the general manager of Willy Rudolf Foerster's successful foreign-owned manufacturing business. Foerster, an anti-Nazi industrialist, employed more than a thousand people, including Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe. He helped Jewish families obtain work, entry permissions and other necessary formalities for their relocation to Japan and paid their travel costs in documented cases.

The diary reveals the devastation of Renate's family home in Tokyo due to air raids in April 1945, their evacuation to the mountain resort town Karuizawa, and their postwar experiences of bartering for food and adjusting to the American Occupation. Among the trivial items were even Renate's commuter train passes, with her family name written in Japanese.

The research of Dr. Clemens Jochem, a biographer, uncovered a nearly forgotten history: Renate's father Ernst Quastler's wife, Hideko Foerster. She came from a lineage of doctors, and while her husband was headstrong, she possessed inner strength to navigate a life of wealth and the complete dissolution of that fortune.

The extensive records discovered by Jochem detail Foerster's role as Betriebsleiter (general manager) and his collaboration with Tokyo's Jewish Refugee Committee. He employed Jewish refugees and helped them secure employment and entry permissions. The investigation also revealed Foerster's opposition to Nazi ideology, which led to his arrest, imprisonment, and torture by the Japanese in 1943.