Sugihara's Ark

On This Day In History
1974: Oskar Schindler, credited with saving 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust, dies

Quote Of The Day
"I hated the brutality, the Sadism and the insanity of Nazism. I just couldn't stand by and see people destroyed. I did what I could. What I had to do. What my conscience told me I must do. That's all there is to it. Really, nothing more."
(Oskar Schindler)

Japan has its own version of Oskar Schindler. His name is Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat living in Lithuania during World War II. Acting against the orders of the Japanese foreign ministry in Tokyo, working eighteen hours a day for six weeks from July to August 1940, he handwrote 2,139 transit visas for Jewish people then residing in Lithuania to help them escape the country following the Soviet invasion of Lithuania. Most of these people were Polish refugees who had fled the country following the Soviet invasion of Poland a few months earlier. Because Sugihara could speak fluent Russian, he was able to negotiate with Joseph Stalin to allow the Jewish refugees safe transit from Lithuania, through the Soviet Union and then on to Japan from Vladivostok.

Based on the assumption that each transit visa holder travelled with a wife and a child, it is estimated that Chiune Sugihara saved the lives of around 6,000 Jews.

Schindler's List Theme - Itzhak Perlman

The "Japanese Schindler" Who Saved Thousands In WWII

Transit To Freedom 

Trailer - Persona Non Grata - The Chiune Sugihara Story