In 1939, the Japanese foreign ministry dispatched Chiune Sugihara to Lithuania to direct the consulate there. That same year, Jewish refugees from Nazi- and Soviet-occupied Poland began streaming into Lithuania desperate to escape Europe. Sugihara not only issued thousands of visas for them to travel to Japan, saving them from Hitler’s advance into the country in 1941, he also arranged for many to be settled temporarily in the Japanese city of Kobe. It’s worth noting that, of all the Jewish communities to fall under German control during World War II, Lithuanian Jewry had the lowest survival rate. David Wolpe, who recently participated at a ceremony in honor of Sugihara in Japan, comments:
Research on those who rescued Jews during the Holocaust shows that many exhibited a streak of independence from an early age. Sugihara was unconventional in a society known for prizing conformity. [His] willfulness was on display when he entered the diplomatic corps and, as vice-minister of the Foreign Affairs Department for Japan in Manchuria in 1934, resigned in protest of the Japanese treatment of the Chinese. . . .
Three times Sugihara cabled his embassy [from the Lithuanian consulate] asking for permission to issue visas to the refugees. The cable from K. Tanaka at the foreign ministry read: “Concerning transit visas requested previously stop advise absolutely not to be issued any traveler not holding firm end visa with guaranteed departure ex japan stop no exceptions stop no further inquiries expected stop.”
Sugihara talked about the refusal with his wife, Yukiko, and his children and decided that despite the inevitable damage to his career, he would defy his government. . . . Day and night he wrote visas. He issued as many visas in a day as would normally be issued in a month. At night his wife . . . massaged his hands, which ached from the constant effort. When Japan finally closed down the embassy in September 1940, he took the stationery with him and continued to write visas that had no legal standing but worked because of the seal of the government and his name. At least 6,000 visas were issued for people to travel through Japan to other destinations, and in many cases entire families traveled on a single visa. It has been estimated that over 40,000 people are alive today because of this one man.
With the consulate closed, Sugihara had to leave. He gave the consulate stamp to a refugee to forge more visas, and he literally threw visas out of the train window to refugees on the platform. . . . After the war, Sugihara was dismissed from the foreign office. He and his wife lost a seven-year-old child and he worked at menial jobs.
Read more on New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/opinion/sugihara-moral-heroism-refugees.html