More Americans have heard of Oskar Schlinder, a businessman of Germany who employed more than 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust in efforts to keep the Nazi party from taking them to concentration camps, than they have heard about a Japanese diplomat named Chiune Sugihara, who broke his country’s laws in order to let more than 6000 Jews avoid territories in Japan that had been occupied by the Nazi party.
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Holocaust survivors and their descendants remember this forgotten soul and their gratitude for his efforts that protected them and their relatives during the Holocaust.
One of the board members of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, Richard Salomon, claimed, “Without him, many of the …show more content…
People who had been issued these visas by Sugihara often took a route to Moscow by train, took another railroad, the Trans-Siberian, to Vladivostok, and then traveled to Kobe, Tokyo. They would normally stay in Kobe for a few months and travel onto Shanghai in China sometime after. There were also some who would travel elsewhere like Salomon’s father did. He first set his sights on India, travelled there, and settled there for some time. He eventually moved onto the United States and settled in Chicago where he began a family.
During this time, Sugihara was moved to Prague where he worked in 1941 and 1942 only to be moved to Bucharest for the following two years of his career. He and his family were eventually captured when soviets invaded Romania and put in prison camp for a year and half before they could return to Japan. In 1946, a year after they returned, Sugihara was asked by the foreign office to resign from his position. His wife suspected this was because they discovered he was issuing unauthorized …show more content…
It was not easy and it was not a matter of sitting down and saying, 'Here, I'll write you this,'" said Anne Akabori, a friend of Sugihara’s son, Hiroki, that helped translate the memoir Yukiko Sugihara wrote called “Visas for Life.” Akabori also wrote a narrative of Chiune Sugihara’s life: “The Gift of Life.”
"And it's been so important for the Japanese people to know there was a person who did whatever he could to lessen the Japanese involvement in the war. He was always for peace," said Akabori.
She now chairs an organization that connects the people who survived because of Sugihara’s gift of a visa and their descendants and mission is to “perpetuate the legacy” of Sugihara. To no surprise, this organization is called the Visas for Life foundation. They have recorded 2,139 visas that were written by Sugihara. With some of the visas being issued for entire families, the exact number of how many visas he issued is still unknown, but this makes the foundation believe the number of ancestors that can be traced back to one of the Jews who survived due to his work is more than
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Holocaust survivors and their descendants remember this forgotten soul and their gratitude for his efforts that protected them and their relatives during the Holocaust.
One of the board members of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, Richard Salomon, claimed, “Without him, many of the …show more content…
People who had been issued these visas by Sugihara often took a route to Moscow by train, took another railroad, the Trans-Siberian, to Vladivostok, and then traveled to Kobe, Tokyo. They would normally stay in Kobe for a few months and travel onto Shanghai in China sometime after. There were also some who would travel elsewhere like Salomon’s father did. He first set his sights on India, travelled there, and settled there for some time. He eventually moved onto the United States and settled in Chicago where he began a family.
During this time, Sugihara was moved to Prague where he worked in 1941 and 1942 only to be moved to Bucharest for the following two years of his career. He and his family were eventually captured when soviets invaded Romania and put in prison camp for a year and half before they could return to Japan. In 1946, a year after they returned, Sugihara was asked by the foreign office to resign from his position. His wife suspected this was because they discovered he was issuing unauthorized …show more content…
It was not easy and it was not a matter of sitting down and saying, 'Here, I'll write you this,'" said Anne Akabori, a friend of Sugihara’s son, Hiroki, that helped translate the memoir Yukiko Sugihara wrote called “Visas for Life.” Akabori also wrote a narrative of Chiune Sugihara’s life: “The Gift of Life.”
"And it's been so important for the Japanese people to know there was a person who did whatever he could to lessen the Japanese involvement in the war. He was always for peace," said Akabori.
She now chairs an organization that connects the people who survived because of Sugihara’s gift of a visa and their descendants and mission is to “perpetuate the legacy” of Sugihara. To no surprise, this organization is called the Visas for Life foundation. They have recorded 2,139 visas that were written by Sugihara. With some of the visas being issued for entire families, the exact number of how many visas he issued is still unknown, but this makes the foundation believe the number of ancestors that can be traced back to one of the Jews who survived due to his work is more than