The Sugihara visas were visas that were forged or otherwise produced by the Japanese ambassador to Lithuania in 1940, Chiune Sugihara, for Jewish refugees seeking to flee from Nazi occupation in Lithuania eastwards through the Soviet Union to Japan. For many this would be a temporary refuge before heading onwards to the United States and other places. Sugihara produced the visas himself by hand using official Japanese diplomatic stamps after he received orders that were unclear from Tokyo. He knew he was basically disobeying orders from his own government not to aid the Jewish population within Lithuania as the Japanese moved closer to Germany in the run up to attacking the United States and Britain in December 1941, dragging the US into the Second World War. For a period of about six weeks between mid-July 1940 and his departure from the country in early September, after being recalled home from Lithuania, Sugihara produced over 2,100 visas, often working long days to do so by hand himself. Because each visa qualified a household and not just an individual to depart in this way for Japan, Sugihara is believed to have saved upwards of around 4,500 Lithuanian Jews, though some studies argue for a higher figure towards 6,000, while others note it could be lower towards 3,500. Today, anywhere between 40,000 and 100,000 Jewish people are said to be the descendants of those whose lives Sugihara saved.[1]
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Sugihara visas chronology of eventsSugihara visas chronology of events
Parts of Lithuania were some of the first European territories taken over by the Nazis. In March 1939, as the German Wehrmacht moved into Czechoslovakia and dismembered that country, the German government had also seized the city of Memel in Lithuania.[2] Much of the country had been promised to the Soviet Union under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939. This stipulated that Nazi Germany would invade and take over most of Poland, while the Russians would be free to reacquire Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland, each of which had been lost during the Russian Civil War two decades earlier. Hence, the Soviets acquired much of Lithuania, though Germany did also take part of it after the Russians invaded the Baltic state in June 1940. This was in keeping with the German view that Lithuania, especially western Lithuania, constituted a historic part of Germany, and indeed parts of the country had formed part of Prussian and then German territory for hundreds of years. Indeed, Lithuania had only re-emerged as a modern, independent nation in 1919 in the midst of the Russian Civil War.[3]
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Eventually, the rest of Lithuania was brought under Nazi control following the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941. The Holocaust was largely underway thereafter, first in the actions of the Einsatzgruppen death squads in the region and then in the implementation of the ‘Final Solution’ from January 1942 onwards. Of an estimated pre-war Jewish population of 200,000 people in Lithuania, roughly 95% were killed during four years of German occupation, making this one of the most devastating regional experiences of the Holocaust.[4]
When the Soviets completed the annexation of Lithuania in June 1940, Chiune Sugihara was the Japanese vice-consul or ambassador there at the time. With Lithuania now ceasing to exist as an independent country, it was only a matter of time before he was recalled to Japan or redeployed elsewhere in Europe.[5] In the meantime he became involved in diplomatic intrigue concerning the large Jewish community in the country. A number of Jews in Lithuania with Dutch connections had appealed to the Dutch consulate for visas to exit the country, fearing arrest or worse under Nazi rule. The Dutch representatives were sympathetic, but sending them to the Netherlands would simply have been an act of transfer to another Nazi-occupied territory, as the Germans had invaded and quickly defeated the Netherlands just weeks earlier in May 1940 as they conquered Western Europe in a six-week campaign. Therefore, they made clandestine arrangements for some Lithuanian Jews to be given refuge in the Dutch colony of Curacao in the Caribbean, a remote colony that the Nazis were unable to establish control over, as it lay overseas.[6] The problem was trying to get the Jewish people involved to the Caribbean. This was where Sugihara came into the equation.[7]
Chiune Sugihara was sympathetic to the plight of the would-be Jewish refugees. He did consult with the Japanese government about whether he could organize transit visas to Japan through the Soviet Union for the applicants to then travel onwards to Curacao, the United States or some other destination. He received unclear responses, though with his government allying more closely with Germany at the time, he was well aware that it would be frowned upon for him to act in this way. He decided to do it nonetheless and in mid-July began producing passports and visas by hand using official Japanese diplomatic stamps that he controlled as the ambassador to Lithuania. He continued doing so, often working 20-hour days for the next six weeks. During that time he received word of his redeployment and he served in various diplomatic positions around Europe in the years that followed, after leaving Lithuania at the beginning of September 1940.[8]
Extent of migration using the Sugihara visasExtent of migration using the Sugihara visas
It is not entirely clear how many Lithuanian Jews migrated as a result of the issuance of the Sugihara visas. It is believed that just over 2,100 visas were produced by Sugihara in this way. However, these were typically issued to heads of households, who were then able to bring their families with them under the one visa. As such, the number of Jewish people who were able to leave Lithuania using the Sugihara visas was greater than the number of actual visas issued. Historians place the number anywhere between 3,500 and 6,000, with around 4,500 being the most likely figure. Many of these migrated on elsewhere after transiting through the Soviet Union to Japan. Some, for instance, ended up in Curacao in the Caribbean, as originally planned. This is not as unusual as it seems. There actually was a longstanding community of Jewish people in this obscure Dutch Caribbean colony going back to the early modern period.[9] Others were given entry into the United States.
Demographic impact of the Sugihara visasDemographic impact of the Sugihara visas
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The long-term demographic impact of the Sugihara visas is also disputed. Scholars of the Holocaust and Second World War historians place the number of people who are descended today from the Jewish people Sugihara saved as being anywhere between 40,000 and 100,000 people depending on how many people were actually saved in 1940. Although they initially made their way to Japan, they often moved on quickly and the majority reside today in either Israel or the United States. Sugihara was arrested at the end of the Second World War, but soon gained his freedom and was allowed to return home to Japan. He was conferred with the Yad Vashem title of ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ in 1984, not long before his death. A square with a memorial to his actions in Jerusalem is named after him today.[10]
See alsoSee also
Explore more about the Sugihara visasExplore more about the Sugihara visas
- Lithuanian-Jewish Records from LitvakSIG, 1795-1940 records collection on MyHeritage
- Lithuanian-Jewish Births from LitvakSIG, 1808-1940 records collection on MyHeritage
- Lithuanian-Jewish Household Registers from LitvakSIG, 1835-1946 records collection on MyHeritage
- Lithuanian-Jewish Deaths from LitvakSIG, 1808-1940 records collection on MyHeritage
- Lithuanian-Jewish Marriages and Divorces from LitvakSIG, 1808-1940 records collection on MyHeritage
- Lithuanian-Jewish Tax and Voter Lists from LitvakSIG, 1839-1955 records collection on MyHeritage
- Lithuanian-Jewish Revision Lists from LitvakSIG, 1795-1942 records collection on MyHeritage
References
- ↑ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/sugihara/timeline/text.html
- ↑ https://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=161
- ↑ Tomas Balkelis, ‘War, Ethnic Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in Lithuania, 1939–1940’, in Contemporary European History, Vol. 16, No. 4 (November, 2007), pp. 461–477.
- ↑ https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lithuania
- ↑ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/sugihara/readings/sugihara.html
- ↑ https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/polish-jewish-refugees-in-lithuania-unexpected-rescue-1940-41
- ↑ https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/chiune-sempo-sugihara
- ↑ Meron Medzini, Under the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Japan and the Jews during the Holocaust Era (Boston, 2016), chapter 10.
- ↑ G. Herbert Cone, ‘The Jews in Curacao: According to Documents from the Archives of the State of New York’, in Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, No. 10 (1902), pp. 141–157.
- ↑ https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/chiune-sempo-sugihara