The Samurai Who Saved Thousands of Jews from the Nazis

In general, when a tragedy happens, many look for a positive side; they seek heroes and their sacrifices. In the pantheon of heroes of the Shoah (the Holocaust) stands Chiune Sugihara, who was the Consul General of Japan in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas (also known as Kovno). Sugihara took up this post in March 1939, six months before the German invasion of neighbouring Poland. Polish and German Jews began to flee to Lithuania. But Lithuania's status as a refuge ended abruptly on 15 June 1940, when the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania. The Soviets allowed Polish Jews to leave Lithuania through the Soviet Union. But in July 1940, with the German advance towards Lithuania, the Soviets ordered all foreign diplomatic posts to leave Kaunas. Sugihara asked for and received an extension. The only other diplomat who remained in Kaunas was Jan Zwartendijk, the acting consul of the Netherlands.

Certain Jewish refugees learned that two Dutch islands in the Caribbean, Curaçao and Dutch Guiana (today known as Suriname), did not require formal entry visas. Consul Zwartendijk was authorized to stamp passports with entry permits. But to reach the Caribbean one had to pass through the USSR. As a condition for obtaining Soviet exit visas, the Soviet consul demanded Japanese transit visas, because one had to pass through Japan to reach the Dutch islands, almost half a world away.

Learning of this need, desperate Jewish refugees crowded in front of the door of the Japanese Consulate in Kaunas. Chiune Sugihara's request to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to issue transit visas was unconditionally refused. Sugihara had to make a very difficult decision. He had to weigh his disciplined traditional Japanese obedience on the one hand against his vocation as a Samurai to help those in need on the other. Sugihara and his family chose to defy their government and help as many people as was humanly possible.

During the following 29 days, from 31 July to 28 August 1940, the Sugiharas spent all their waking hours writing visas by hand, an average of 300 visas a day — the equivalent of a month's work for the Kaunas consulate. Chiune himself refused to rest even a few hours and subsisted on sandwiches, and Yukiko, Mrs Sugihara, massaged her husband's aching hands every night. Even in his last moments as Japanese consul in Kaunas, while boarding the train taking him to Berlin on 1 September 1940, Chiune was writing visas and handing them to those he saw from the train window. Even as the train began to pull away, he threw the consular visa stamp to a refugee so that he could write a few more transit visas. As a direct result of Sugihara's heroism, the lives of 6,000 refugees were saved from Nazi barbarism; they were thus able to board the Trans-Siberian train bound for Kobe, Japan.

After the Second World War, Sugihara was dismissed from the Japanese diplomatic corps for his insubordination. To support his family he worked as a translator and, finally, as a businessman. It was not until 1969 that Sugihara's incredible heroism and sacrifice were discovered, by a survivor he had saved. Chiune never spoke of his actions. Chiune Sugihara died on 31 July 1986, at the age of 86.

On the anniversary of his death I wanted to remind you of his heroism.