Chiune Sugihara
Chiune Sugihara
Righteous Among Nations
Chiune Sugihara: Righteous Among Nations
by Val Graham
Chiune Sugihara was not a conventional individual for a well-born middle-class Japanese boy of his era. His father wanted him to be a doctor, but it was not what he wanted for himself, so when he sat the exam he wrote only his name, deliberately failing.
He joined the Foreign Service and then the military, being posted to Korea and Manchukuo, (the Manchurian occupied puppet state of Japan), then part of the Japanese Empire. As the director of the foreign ministry in Manchukuo, Sugihara negotiated the purchase of the North Manchurian railroad from the Soviet Union in 1932.
At the time, the area had many White Russian emigres and, (again unconventionally), Sugihara married a Russian woman, converting to Russian Orthodoxy. The marriage was short-lived, but he became fluent in Russian, and became an expert on the Soviet Union. He also spoke English and German.
In 1935, he resigned his commission as Deputy Foreign Minister in protest over the Japanese mistreatment of the local Chinese.
Sugihara remarried, this time to a Japanese woman, and was posted to Lithuania in November 1939 to provide Japan with intelligence on Soviet and German troop movements in the Baltic region.
As the Germans moved into Poland, Sugihara took pity on the plight of the refugees who were desperate to escape the Nazis, most of whom were Jewish. He recognised that with western Europe at war, the one of the clearest and easiest escape routes for refugees from Poland and Lithuania would be to go east through the Soviet Union to Japan.
The Japanese government instructed Sugihara that no visas were to be written for people who had no onward destination, or who had insufficient funds to support themselves. Although of junior rank, Sugihara was head of the Consulate in Kaunas, so began to issue ‘transit visas’ to those wishing to flee, giving them entry to Japan for what was supposedly a limited 10 day period until they could relocate. (In reality, the transit period was never enforced.) Sugihara also made connections with the Polish underground in Lithuania and issued them visas for transit through Japan. He continued to blatantly disobey the orders of his government.
From 18 July to 28 August 1940, Sugihara hand-wrote visas for between 18-20 hours per day producing a month's worth of visas each day, until 4 September when he was forced to close the Consulate in Kaunas by the Russians. He was then transferred to Prague, Czechoslovakia, with his wife and young sons, leaving Lithuania in early September 1940. Even as the train was pulling out from the Kaunas station he continued to write visas for refugees, who followed him along the platform.
By the time Sugihara left Lithuania he had issued thousands of visas to refugees and their families. Not everyone who held visas was able to leave Lithuania, however, before the Soviet Union stopped granting exit visas, (which the refugees needed to get out of Russia, generally via Vladivostock).
A Japanese Foreign Office document records a total of 5,580 visas were given to ‘Poles and Jews’[1]. There is some debate as to the actual number of people who managed to escape using Sugihara’s visas, since a whole family might travel on one visa, but it is generally accepted to have been between 5,000 to 10,000 people[2] [3].
Sugihara returned to Japan in 1947, where the Foreign Ministry retired him with a small pension as part of a large staff reduction enacted under the American occupation. It was also intimated that his retirement had resulted from his disobedience in Kaunas.
At this time Japanese trading companies were establishing companies to trade with Russia. Sugihara was fluent in Russian, trusted by the Russians and had a good knowledge of the country. He was employed at the age of 60 to be the Russian representative of a shell company which was owned by Toshiba. He left his family in Japan and lived for several years in Russia.
Sugihara’s years in Russia are not well documented. He never spoke of his humanitarian effort in Kaunas, and it was several years later that he was found by a Sugihara survivor and his exploits were made public. He was honoured in Israel, Japan, USA, Kaunas and Australia. His youngest son, Nobuki was given a scholarship to Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
In 1984, Yad Vashem declared Sugihara ‘Righteous Among Nations' for his assistance to the refugees. He was honoured with a ceremony in Jerusalem in January 1985 and a grove of trees was planted in his honour close to Jerusalem in a commemorative forest. By this time, Sugihara was too ill to attend for the many honours that were presented to him, so his youngest son, Nobuki, and his wife Esin, attended and accepted the honours on his behalf.
Numerous other memorials were created, and in Tsuruga a museum dedicated to Sugihara and the refugees continue to conduct research, as does the city of Kobe where the refugees were settled prior to their onward journey. Today a street in Netanya, Israel has been dedicated ‘Sugihara Street’, as well as one in Brazil. The port of Tsuruga where the refugees originally landed is now known as The Port of Humanity. A museum ‘Sugihara House’ was opened in Kaunas.
When asked about his motivation for risking everything to save the refugees, Sugihara explained that the refugees were human beings, and that they simply needed help.
You want to know about my motivation, don't you? Well. It is the kind of sentiments anyone would have when he actually sees refugees face to face, begging with tears in their eyes. He just cannot help but sympathize with them. Among the refugees were the elderly and women. They were so desperate that they went so far as to kiss my shoes. Yes, I actually witnessed such scenes with my own eyes. Also, I felt at that time, that the Japanese government did not have any uniform opinion in Tokyo. Some Japanese military leaders were just scared because of the pressure from the Nazis; while other officials in the Home Ministry were simply ambivalent. People in Tokyo were not united. I felt it silly to deal with them. So, I made up my mind not to wait for their reply. I knew that somebody would surely complain about me in the future. But, I myself thought this would be the right thing to do. There is nothing wrong in saving many people's lives... The spirit of humanity, philanthropy... neighbourly friendship... with this spirit, I ventured to do what I did, confronting this most difficult situation – and because of this reason, I went ahead with redoubled courage.[4]
Chiune Sugihara died on 31 July 1986. Despite his story being known in Israel and internationally, little was known about him in Japan. Only when a large Jewish delegation from around the world, including the Israeli ambassador to Japan, attended his funeral, did his neighbours find out what he had done.[5] His subsequent considerable posthumous acclaim contrasts with the obscurity in which he lived following the loss of his diplomatic career.[6]
What Chiune Sugihara and his small staff did in 1940 was one of the great humanitarian efforts of all time resulting in life and freedom for over 6,000 people. His memory and humanitarianism continues.
In Prague, Sugihara meticulously prepared a list of all the visas he had issued and forwarded it to the Japanese Government. Of those that resettled in New Zealand Peter Baruch and his family appear on the list as number 1550, and Peter’s uncle Jusio Bender was number 962, even though he didn’t make it. Peter and his family settled in Wellington, as did other Sugihara refugees Bertie Frankel and his parents and Bertie’s uncle Bertchik Schor.
· Peter Baruch is now 83 and lives in Australia. He has 5 children and 6 grandchildren.
· Bertie Frankel now lives in Israel with his wife Nira. He left New Zealand in February 1961, spent a few years in London before making aliya to Israel in 1969. Bertie and Nira have two sons and six grandchildren. They all live close to each other in Kfar Saba and Raanana, two small cities to the North East of Tel Aviv.
· Bertchik Schor was the younger brother of Bertie Frankel’s mother Perla. He was 16 when we arrived in Wellington. He went to Wellington Tech and then Canterbury University where he graduated as an Engineer specializing in Air-Conditioning. Today he lives in Israel and is well into his 90’s.
Peter, Bertie and Bertchik are often interviewed as ‘Sugihara Survivors’.
The following people with New Zealand connections also have reason to be grateful to Sugihara San:
Manek Gutgeld and Ozer Galler: Manek and Ozer both obtained Sugihara visas and settled in Wellington. Manek Gutgeld married Marysia Baruch after she was widowed. Ozer Galler was Mankek Gutgeld’s brother-in-law, but he could not find his wife after the war. Ozer met Nina in Israel, they married and had a son, Dennis.
Betzalel Svirskis left Lithuania to travel the world to seek his fortune. He ended up in Auckland when the war broke out and sent for his wife Sonia to join him. By then all doors for Jews to migrate from Lithuania were closed. The only opportunity left was to go to Surinam transiting through Tokyo. Sonia apparently went to Kaunas and tried on many occasions to get a visa from Sugihara and although the lines were long she was one of the last to obtain a visa before Sugihara was recalled to Japan. Sonia’s visa, dated 21 August 1940, was number 2076 of the 2139 visas issued. Sonia travelled alone across Siberia on the Trans-Siberian railway to Tokyo and thence on to Auckland. The family moved to Melbourne over 20 years ago, and three surviving sons, Eric, Zelwyn, & William, now live in Australia. The youngest son, Harry, passed away in 1982.
Sonia Svirkis was a first cousin of Lisa Porus (née Malaska) and her sister Freda Narev (née Malaska) who managed, with her husband, to locate the Malaska sisters in Europe after the war. Sonia and Betzalel managed to obtain permission for them, together with Lisa’s husband, Yitzhak Porus, to come to NZ in 1949 from a displaced persons camp in Germany. They settled in Auckland where their son, Jack Porus is a senior partner in law firm, Glaister Ennor. Freda Malaska married Bob Narev, settled in Auckland where they raised their three children and Bob was a senior partner in law firm, Glaister Ennor.
Notes:
[1] Levine, Hillel (1996). In search of Sugihara: the elusive Japanese diplomat who risked his life to rescue 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-0-684-83251-7.
[2] There is debate over the actual number of people that were saved by Sugihara:
The Simon Wiesenthal Center has estimated that Chiune Sugihara issued transit visas for about 6,000 Jews and that around 40,000 descendants of the Jewish refugees were alive in because of his actions. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiune_Sugihara]
Sugihara's widow and eldest son estimate that he saved 10,000 Jews from certain death, whereas Boston University professor and author, Hillel Levine, also estimates that he helped "as many as 10,000 people", but that far fewer people ultimately survived. Indeed, some Jews who received Sugihara's visas failed to leave Lithuania in time, were later captured by the Germans who invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, and perished in the Holocaust.
[3] Levine, ibid
[4] Levine, ibid
[5] Lee, Dom; Mochizuki, Ken (2003). Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story. New York: Lee & Low Books. ISBN 978-1-58430-157-8.
[6] Fogel, Joshua A. "The Recent Boom in Shanghai Studies." Journal of the History of Ideas 71, no. 2 (2010): 313–333.