The memory of Sugihara and the ‘visas for life’ in Poland

Abstract

This article examines the historical memory of the act of issuing over 2,000 visas to Polish Jews by the Japanese Consul in Lithuania, Sugihara Chiune. Sugihara’s “visas for life” are memorialised heavily in Japan, in the countries where the refugees ultimately settled (Israel, United States, Canada and Australia), and in Lithuania. However, in Poland the story is barely known, and it does not seem to form part of the national narrative of survival during WWII. Is it because the refugees were Polish Jews, and, as such, they do not belong to either the Polish or the Jewish historical memory? The study of Polish “places of memory” (Pierre de Nora’s lieux de memoire ) revealed that in Poland this topic attracts researchers primarily in the field of Japanese Studies, and not in Jewish Studies or WWII Studies. The presence of this story in the media and popular culture is scattered and fragmented. In terms of institutional memory and memorialisation of this act, Sugihara twice was granted (posthumously) high state awards by the Republic of Poland, but there are no monuments, no streets named after him, no museum exhibits dedicated to “visas for life” – in stark contrast to Lithuania. It is even more remarkable that stories of survival of an estimated 6,000 refugees – Polish citizens, do not attract public interest in Poland. The article concludes that a number of new “places of memory” are needed in Poland to properly commemorate Sugihara’s act of issuing visas, and the fate of thousands of Polish Jews who escaped the Holocaust.