The following essay on role model Chiune Sugihara was written by Gabriel Brzail, a middle schooler, enrolled in City Congregation’s Bar/Bat Mitzvah program. Students spend a year and a half researching their heritage, values and beliefs, and write on a Jewish subject of their choice, their major project. The process improves both the student’s writing and critical thinking skills, as well as his/her self confidence and overall maturity.
A hero is someone who takes actions to help others, often at considerable risk to him- or herself. My hero is a Japanese government official named Chiune Sugihara. He was a Japanese diplomat who saved thousands of lives in the Holocaust.
In 1920, Sugihara served in the Japanese Imperial Army, stationed in Korea, then occupied by Japan. He took the Foreign Ministry’s language exams the following year, and they recruited him. He was sent to Gakuin National University in Harbin, China, a Japanese training center for experts on the Soviet Union. Here, he became fluent in Russian and German.
Sugihara became director of the foreign ministry in Manchukuo, a puppet state Japan had established in Manchuria in occupied northeast China. In 1934, he resigned in protest of the Japanese treatment of the Chinese.
Because he was fluent in Russian, Sugihara was sent to the Japanese consulate in Lithuania in November 1939. One of his jobs was to provide Japan with intelligence on troop movements in the Baltic region. He was a spy!! World War Two had started and in 1940, Sugihara issued transit visas through Japan to the Polish underground in Lithuania.
During the summer of 1940, the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania, and many Jewish refugees from Poland, as well as Jews from Lithuania, tried to acquire exit visas, but it was impossible without a visa from a country willing to accept them.
Later that summer, the Dutch Consul Jan Zwartendijk provided many Jewish families with visas to Curacao and other Dutch colonies, but they would need transit visas to get there. Zwartendijk became known as the Angel of Curacao, and his actions were also heroic.
Jewish refugees came to the Japanese consulate and Sugihara decided to help them escape from danger. The Japanese government required that visas be given only to those who had gone through appropriate immigration procedures and had enough money. Most of the refugees did not fit these criteria. Sugihara contacted the Japanese Foreign Ministry three times for instructions. Each time, the response was: “No exceptions allowed. And don’t ask again”.
Knowing that the refugees were in grave danger if they stayed behind, Sugihara decided to ignore the orders and issue ten-day visas to Jews for transit through Japan. In Japanese culture, to defy your superior was an unusual act of disobedience. Sugihara negotiated with Soviet officials who agreed to let the Jews travel across Russia to Vladivostok via the Trans-Siberian Railway; only at five times the standard ticket price.
By the time he closed the consulate, only a few months later in the fall of 1940, Sugihara was giving visas to refugees who lacked all travel papers.
He had issued visas to 2,140 families, perhaps 6,000 people. Sugihara left Lithuania in September 1940, when the Soviet Union closed all the consulates.
The Japanese transferred him to Prague, and then to Bucharest, where he remained until after the end of the war. In 1944, when Bucharest was liberated, the Soviets arrested Sugihara together with other diplomats from enemy nations. He and his family were held as prisoners of war for one and a half years.
When Sugihara returned to Japan in 1947, the Foreign Ministry forced him to retire. His wife Yukiko, and others, have said that the Foreign Ministry told Sugihara he was dismissed because of “that incident” in Lithuania. After the war, Sugihara held a variety of jobs.
In 1984, shortly before his death, Sugihara was honored as a Righteous Among the Nations, in Israel at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial, for his help to refugees in Lithuania during the war.
Sugihara is a very personal hero for me, because he saved the life of my Great, Great Uncle Albert. Albert was the recipient of the 865th visa issued on August 2nd, 1940. My family knew he had escaped through Asia, but the full story was only confirmed when we recently found his mis-spelled name – Aram Luksenberg – on the list of visa recipients
From Lithuania he took the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow, to Vladivostok, which is a 12-day journey. From there, Albert took a boat to Japan.
He was hosted in Kobe by the Jewish Community there, who documented his arrival as 25th Feb 1941, and took information about his relatives. My great grandpa Arnold’s name is listed with his address in London.
In September 1941, he took a boat to Shanghai, we think a train to Rangoon, and another boat to Calcutta. In November 1941, he took a train across India to Mumbai.
Then he purchased a boat ticket from Mumbai to Durban, South Africa, and at the same time, purchased an additional ticket from Cape Town to Buenos Aires. He arrived in Durban in July 1942. We think he went by land to Cape Town, but because of appendicitis, he never continued travelling. He stayed in Cape Town and made a life there. This journey took Albert over two years. While researching him, I found letters written by my Great Grandparents to Albert in South Africa. One letter from my Great Grandpa, told him he was hoping to stay in England, but considering Australia, America and Canada, and that Albert should join him.
In 1956, he took one more boat to Southampton and moved to London to reunite with his brother; and his nieces my Grandma and her sister; and later his great nieces, my mom and her sisters.
Sugihara has a number of memorials, and several streets named after him around the world, and even an asteroid.
Heroes often share similar traits and values such as single-mindedness, independence and compassion. Sugihara also shares these traits. For instance, his father wanted him to become a physician, but he deliberately failed his medical exams and instead attended Waseda University, to study English. His defiance of his parents showed early signs of independence and willfulness.
Furthermore, he was a very compassionate person, saving thousands of people from extermination, even though this was against his orders. He said, “Well. it is the kind of sentiment anyone would have when he actually sees refugees face to face, begging with tears in their eyes”. Sugihara said that anyone in his position would save the refugees. Yet we know that most others did not. Sugihara also demonstrated modesty and downplayed his actions, showing what a remarkable person he was.
When starting this paper, I looked at my own values to decide who I should choose as my hero. Sugihara shares my values of justice and compassion. Even if Sugihara hadn’t saved Albert, I would still consider him a righteous hero, but the personal connection makes it even more meaningful.
