Sugihara. Image courtesy of public domain.
Joel Kontinen
Ahead of International Holocaust
Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, a virtual event on Monday honoured a hero often
referred to as the “Japanese Schindler” for helping
to save thousands of Jews from the Holocaust.
Chiune
Sugihara, Japanese diplomat stationed in Lithuania, defied his own government’s orders by
issuing handwritten transit visas in 1940 to more than 6,000 Lithuanian Jews,
enabling them to escape Nazi-occupied Europe. He continued to do so for over a
month until the Japanese consulate was closed. More than 40,000 descendants of
those Jews are believed to be alive today because of his courageous actions.
Sugihara died in 1986 at the age
of 86.
The online event highlighted
Sugihara’s heroic deeds and the lessons we can learn from him in battling
contemporary anti-Semitism. The reception was hosted by the Combat
Anti-Semitism Movement and B’nai B’rith International.
Sacha Roytman Dratwa, executive
director of the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement, told JNS, “While Sugihara has
gotten more attention in recent decades, particularly after Yad Vashem gave him
the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ title in the 1980s, most people, including
Jews, are still unaware of his heroic deeds. So, it is important that we honour
those, such as Sugihara, who came to the aid of the Jewish people in the
darkest hour of their history.”
“With fewer and fewer survivors
of the Holocaust alive to tell their stories, it is vital that its lessons
continue to be shared,” he continued. “The Sugihara lesson is about what one
person can do in the face of evil—which, with anti-Semitism on the rise around
the world, is as relevant as ever.”
He was not the only one
to save Jews: Apart from Schindler,
who saved 1 200 Jews from concentration camps, Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker, teamed with 20 others and smuggled
2,500 children out of the Warsaw Ghetto, some in ambulances and trams between
October 1940 and April 1943 and placed them in Catholic homes. And in the UK,
they had Frank Foley, who
saved 10,000 Jews and sir Nicholas
Winton who saved 669 Jewish children..
Source
Ghermezian, Shiryn. 2021. Honoring the Japanese diplomat who saved thousands of Jews from Holocaust Jewish News Syndicate 27 January
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