Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist sheltered approximately 1,100 Jews from the Nazis by employing them in his factories during World War II. Japan also has its own Schindler; Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat saved about 6,000 European Jews from the Holocaust
Diplomat who saved 6,000 Jews
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently visited a memorial for the diplomat. Sugihara saved Jews by issuing visas from war-torn Lithuania, in defiance of Tokyo. Abe visited the building, now a museum, that housed the consulate where the diplomat worked in the Baltic state’s second city Kaunas
The diplomat, who died in 1986 aged 86, is thought to have been among around 15 who issued visas for European Jews during World War II. Sugihara was appointed vice-consul in October 1939, one month after German and allied Soviet forces attacked and carved up neighbouring Poland, according to AFP. Japan saw the still-independent and neutral Lithuania, which harboured thousands of Polish refugees, as a perfect location for the polyglot Sugihara to collect intelligence
Defying Tokyo’s orders
But when Moscow invaded the country, crowds of Jewish refugees, mostly from occupied Poland, started lining up at the Japanese consulate seeking visas to flee. Sugihara wasted no time in issuing visas, sometimes working 18 hours a day and evading strict instructions issued by Tokyo. With visas in hand, Jews took a gruelling two-week railway trip across Russia to Vladivostok in the far east and then travelled by boat to Japan