A Japanese Righteous Gentile: The Sugihara Case
January 27, 2020
In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2020, we are sharing an excerpt from Meron Medzini’s Under the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Japan and the Jews during the Holocaust Era. This book is Open Access and freely available at OAPEN.org.
In the Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles in the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Japan is represented by one individual deemed worthy to be included: a man who helped some 6,000 Jews escape from Lithuania in the summer of 1940. His name was Vice Consul Sugihara Chiune (or Sugihara Sempo), who granted transit visas to Japan to some two thousand, six hundred Polish and Lithuanian Jewish families, thus saving them from either probable extermination by the Germans or prolonged incarceration or Siberian exile by the Soviets.
