The one positive for 2020 - Lithuania named it the year of Sugihara

[Riggo-toni]

Everybody's heard of Oskar Schindler, thanks to Spielberg. Fewer are familiar with Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat in Hungary, who saved 20,000 Jews, survived an assassination attempt by Eichmann, only to be tortured and murdered by order of Stalin.  And very few ever knew the story of the Japanese diplomat in Lithuania Chiune Sugihara, who rescued an estimated 6000 Jews by defying orders and issuing travel visas that allowed them to escape East. 

 

It was a decision that not only cost him his career, but led him to be shunned by Japanese society, spending the rest of his life in penury doing menial jobs, including as a door to door salesman. While Schindler's Jews helped support him after several failed businesses and sponsored trips to Israel, no one ever came to thank Sugihara. It wasn't until 1968 that an Israeli attache to the Tokyo embassy managed to track him down and interview him. Perhaps no one was more shocked than Sugihara's own son, who had no idea about what his father had done. When a reporter asked him if it bothered him that no one had ever thanked him for what he did, he simply replied he never expected anything. 

In 1984, Israel announced it was declaring him as one of the Righteous Among Nations. Unfortunately by that time he was too ill to travel to receive the honor. Still, he was completely unknown in his own country. It wouldn't be until his funeral a couple years later when a large group of Israeli dignitaries travelled to Japan to attend his funeral that his work began to be recognized.

 

[Dan T.]

Thanks for sharing his story.  I had heard of Raoul Wallenberg.  The street adjacent to the Holocaust Museum in DC was renamed Raoul Wallenberg Way Place.

 

But I had not heard about Sugihara.  It has been estimated as many as 100,000 people alive today are the descendants of the recipients of Sugihara visas. Thank God that in the darkest times of human history, brave men and women like this act on their conscience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiune_Sugihara

 

[Dan T.]

[PleaseBlitz]

Thanks for posting this.  

[Riggo-toni]

You're welcome ☺️