Japanese Diplomat Saved 6 000 Jews From Concentration Camps

 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

 

Frank Foley – British Spy Risked His Life to Save Over 10,000 Jews From Nazi Camps

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UK government, public domain.




Joel Kontinen

Frank Foley, (1884–1958) British spy, who was positioned in Berlin in the 1930s, got to know about the concentration camps that were being built. He was an spy, a bit pauchny, wearing horm--rimmed glasses. Not at all like James Bond.

He fought to get Jewish liberated and sent to Israel. After breaking some rules, he got 10,090 Jews to leave Germany.

Here’s what the British press tells about him:

“i>When the rules insisted on £1,000 for a Palestine visa – a huge sum, especially for Jews with bank accounts frozen by the Nazis – Foley would accept payments of £10 on the grounds that £990 would somehow magically appear once the refugee disembarked in the port of Haifa.

When people said they had no money at all, he would gently hint that maybe someone could write them a letter promising them £1,000 …

In late August, days before war broke out, Foley left the Berlin passport office for the last time, but not before he had summoned someone to collect visas for 80 young Jews.

Even after Foley left Germany, Jews were still escaping on papers signed by him. The last group, 300 men, got out on August 28 1939, four days before Hitler’s invasion of Poland started the Second World War.”

Source:


Lusher, Adam, 2018.Frank Foley: The mild-mannered nered British spy who defied Hitler and saved 10,000 Jews from the Nazis Independent (18 September)