A Japanese Schindler?

Sempo Sugihara was more like a Japanese Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat in Budapest who "must be honored with saving at least 100,000 Jews." Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Lithuania, issued transit visas, written with his own hand, to thousands of threatened Jews in 1940 in defiance of the orders of his government. He is credited with saving 6,000 -- the "Sugihara survivors." Lest that lead you to regard him as only a mini-Wallenberg, remember the words of the Talmud: "To save one life is as if you have saved the world."

Raoul Wallenberg, tragically, was arrested by the Soviet NKVD on suspicion of spying ("Though no proof of this existed, the Soviets were suspicious of a neutral diplomat on a purely 'humanitarian' mission that was funded by the American War Refugee Board. It was common for Soviets to camouflage spying missions as humanitarian work.") and disappeared into the Gulag. Sempo Sugihara, by contrast, spent the rest of his life in peace and obscurity as a translator, never speaking of what he had done and never even knowing of the lives he had saved until:

One day in 1969, a Jewish man who was saved by Sempo, came to meet him. This man had long been trying to find him, and finally found Sempo's house. They met, and Sempo knew for the first time the people he issued visas to were alive in Israel. In 1985, he was recognized as "Righteous among the nations" in Israel. He died next year peacefully.

This is from the Life Studies blog of bioethicist and philosopher Masahiro Morioka, who, like most Japanese people, did not know the story of Sempo Sugihara until this October 11, when a television drama about his life was aired on Japan's Yomiuri TV.

Here are more sources on Sugihara's story, in particular detail here.

Comments

[KaneCitizen]

Amba -

Here's a Sugihara documentary available from PBS. Also, a film called Visas and Virtue won the Oscar for Best Short several years ago. It is available here. Interestingly enough, even though it won an Oscar, this reviewer said it was not a film she would recommend for schools.

Also, are you familiar with John Rabe? Kind of the flip-flop of Sugihara in that he was a German who helped save residents of Nanking from Japanese atrocities.

KC

[Danny]

I saw an excellent exhibit on Sugihara at one of the Holocaust museums, it must have been the big one in Washington. I'm surprised there hasn't been a "Schinder's List" type of film about him. But they'd probably get someone like Christian Bale to play him rather than an actual Japanese person.

I'm just as fascinated by John Rabe, the person mentioned in the above comment. Wow, what a story. Imagine writing to Hitler to complain about atrocities happening in another country.

I always held out hope that Raoul Wallenberg would be found alive, especially when the Soviet Union collapsed. But at this point he'd be 93 so it seems highly unlikely. Maybe he really did die in Russian captivity in 1947 as some people there claimed.