Have JTF-ers heard about the Japanese Schindler?
from the NYT
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E03E0DF1239F931A25756C0A960958260:
Chiune Sugihara, and in recent years he has come to be known as the "Japanese Schindler." During the summer of 1940, at the cost of his job and years of humiliation for disobeying his government, Mr. Sugihara, a consul for Japan in Kaunas, Lithuania, signed more than 2,100 visas for Jews fleeing Eastern Europe. It is estimated that the visas enabled 8,000 to 10,000 people to escape.
Mr. Sugihara died in 1986, soon after being honored at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. His story was virtually unknown until "The Fugu Plan," a book by Rabbi Marvin Tokayer about the Japanese and the Jews in World War II, was published in 1979.
Now a new book, "Visas for Life," written by Mr. Sugihara's widow, Yukiko, and translated by his son, Hiroki, tells the story in more detail. Dr. Kadish, a New Rochelle resident, was in the audience recently when Hiroki Sugihara addressed the Friday Men's Club of Y.M.-Y.W.H.A. of Mid-Westchester here.
Also attending, along with more than 300 other people -- including a group of students from Keio Academy in Purchase -- were several people Mr. Sugihara's father had saved. One was Lilly Singer of White Plains, Dr. Kadish's aunt, who was 16 when she and 10 other members of her family -- including Dr. Kadish's mother -- waited in Kaunas for transit visas through Russia and Japan. The Soviets had given permission to let the Jews through, but the Japanese Government, whom Mr. Sugihara asked three times, refused.
He signed the visas anyway, writing so many in such a short time that his hands became cramped. In a talk illustrated by slides, Hiroki Sugihara described how his mother massaged his father's hands, and how he, as a boy of 5, was impressed by the plight of Jews converging at the consulate. "I remember seeing the frightened eyes of the children at the gate and telling my father he must do something to save those children," Mr. Sugihara said. For the next few years, Chiune Sugihara, a linguist who spoke six languages, was transferred to different European posts. At the end of the war, the Sugiharas spent 18 months in a Russian internment camp in Romania under harsh conditions, his son said. Then, upon his return to Japan in 1947, he was forced to resign from the Japanese Foreign Ministry. The reason was clear: his disobedience to his country in 1940.
"My younger brother, who was born in Kaunas, died, and we lived in relative poverty," Hiroki Sugihara said. "The worst part was a deep humiliation my father had to endure by being publicly dismissed. But he never expressed regret over what he did."
At the same time, his father also never spoke about what he did, because his actions had brought pain to his family, his son said. It was only 28 years later, when his father met one of the survivors, that he began to understand the significance of his actions. Then, learning that he had made life possible for so many, "he experienced a great joy," Mr. Sugihara said. "It enabled him to be reborn, and any humiliation was cleansed from his mind and soul."
Besides receiving the Righteous Among the Nations award from Israel in 1985, Chiune Sugihara posthumously received the Courage to Care award from the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the Raoul Wallenberg award from the Shaare Zedek Hospital of Jerusalem and the Nagasaki Peace Prize.
Topic: Japan, being Intelligent, DISLIKES OBAMA (Read 8150 times)