In search of Sugihara: the elusive Japanese diplomat who risked his life to rescue 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust

Abstract

On August 2, 1940, as on every other morning for weeks before, a long line of Jewish refugees waited outside Japanese consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania. Many had already witnessed Nazi atrocities in Poland and other Axis-occupied lands, and they were desperate to escape. To leave Europe they needed foreign transit visas. And at window, smiling Japanese consul was issuing them. Before government closed down consulate and reassigned him to Berlin, he would issue thousands of such visas. This is story of Chiune Sugihara, a diplomat and spy who saved as many as 10,000 Jews from deportation to concentration camps and almost certain death, Because of extreme modesty, Sugihara's tremendous act of moral courage is only now beginning to become widely known. Unlike Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish diplomat whose government sent him to Hungary with express purpose of saving and Oskar Schindler, German industrialist who at least initially had a vested economic interest in protecting lives of his Jews, Sugihara had no apparent reason to perform acts of rescue. Indeed, he acted in direct violation of official Japanese policy, which directed all government and military personnel to cooperate with murderous policies of their Nazi allies. Examining Sugihara's education and background -- a background shared with colonial administrators and military men who committed the rape of Nanjing -- author Hillel Levine finds nothing that explains extraordinary behavior. Levine's search has taken him from old Japanese consul building in Kaunas (now Kovno), Lithuania, to Australian outback; across Japan from rice fields ofSugihara's native town to boardrooms of conglomerates where younger schoolmates still hold power. But more Levine sought answers to Sugihara's puzzling behavior, more he encountered questions. Remarkably, Chiune Sugihara was not only Japanese official to save Jews. Yet none was ever punished for insubordination. Was there a secret Japanese plan to save Jews from Nazi genocide? Much Holocaust scholarship focuses on perpetrators of evil, trying to illuminate what drove ordinary men and women to commit horrifying and murderous acts. But perhaps as difficult to understand is phenomenon of rescue: what inspired courageous individuals to swim against tide of cruelty and indifference. This sensitive and nuanced biography concludes that there is no link between a person's background and moral inclinations. Mercy remains a divine mystery despite our human craving to reduce it to behavioristic formulas. This book does not attempt to explain humanity to man. Instead Levine has woven a fascinating narrative of one man's heroic efforts to save lives, in midst of so many seeking to destroy them.