Chiune Sugihara

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Chiune Sugihara

Chiune Sugihara ( Japanese 杉原 千畝 , Sugihara Chiune , born January 1, 1900 in Kōzuchi, Mugi County (today: Mino ), Gifu Prefecture ; † July 31, 1986 in Kamakura ) was a Japanese diplomat who served as consul of the Japanese Empire in Lithuania saved about 6,000 Jews during World War II . He became known as the "Japanese Schindler ".

Life

childhood

Chiune Sugihara's birth register showing his place of birth as Kōzuchi, Mugi County.

According to the entry in the birth register, Chiune Sugihara was born in Kōzuchi (now Mino) in Mugi County in Gifu Prefecture. The Japanese city of Yaotsu , on the other hand, claims that it is the birthplace of Chiune Sugihara.

His father Sugihara Yoshimizu belonged to the middle class, his mother Sugihara Yatsu came from a samurai family. He was the second son along with four brothers and a sister.

education

In 1912 he graduated from Furuwatari Elementary School (today: Heiwa Elementary School Nagoya ) with the highest honors and began to study at the 5th Prefectural Middle School (today: Zuiryō High School) in Nagoya. His father wanted him to become a doctor like himself, but he purposely failed the entrance exam by just writing his name on the paper. Instead, he entered the renowned Waseda University in 1918 and chose English literature as a major. In 1919 he passed the Foreign Ministry entrance exam. The Japanese Foreign Ministry hired him and sent him to Harbin , Republic of China , where he also learned the Russian and German languages and later became an expert on Russian affairs.

Manchurian foreign office

When Sugihara worked in the Manchurian foreign office, he took part in the negotiations with the Soviet Union on the North Manchurian Railway. He left his post as deputy foreign minister in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in protest of Japanese mistreatment of local Chinese people. In Harbin, when he was 24, he married Klaudia Semjonowa Apollonow ( Russian Клавдия Семёновна Аполлоновая ), daughter of a Belarusian officer, and converted to the Greek Orthodox faith. In 1935 he divorced before returning to Japan. In Japan he married Kikuchi Yukiko , who became Sugihara ( 杉原 幸 子 , Sugihara Yukiko ) with the marriage . Sugihara Chiune also served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Information Department and for the Japanese Legation in Helsinki , Finland . In 1939 he became vice consul of the Japanese consulate in Kaunas in Lithuania . His second job was to report on Soviet and German troop movements, during which he cooperated with Polish secret services as part of a larger Japanese-Polish cooperation.

Lithuania

The former Japanese consulate in Kaunas
Transit Visa to Japan for Susan Bluman issued by Sugihara

When the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania in 1940 as a result of the Hitler-Stalin Pact , many Jewish refugees from Poland living there tried to get exit visas. Without a visa it was dangerous to travel, but it was almost impossible to find countries that issued them. Hundreds of refugees came to the Japanese consulate to get visas to Japan. The Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk had provided some of them with papers for the official destination country Curaçao , a Caribbean island that did not require an entry visa, or for Dutch Guiana (now Suriname ). At that time, the Japanese government officially pursued a policy of neutrality towards the Jews . However, she demanded that visas should only be issued to people with sufficient funds after they have gone through immigration formalities. Most of the refugees did not meet these criteria. Sugihara dutifully consulted the Japanese Foreign Ministry three times for instructions. Each time the ministry replied that without exception anyone who should get a visa must have a third country visa to travel to Japan.

On July 29, 1940, Sugihara began to issue visas on his own initiative after consulting his wife . In doing so, he ignored the allocation requirements many times and provided the Jews - in breach of the instructions given to him - with a 10-day transit visa for Japan. Given his position and the culture of the Japanese field service, this was an extraordinary move with no precedent.

He presented to the Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Relations, Vladimir Dekanosow , who, as the representative of the Moscow party leadership, was responsible for the sovietization of Lithuania, the plan to send the Jewish applicants on the Trans-Siberian Railway to the Pacific coast and from there to Japan . Stalin and People's Commissar Molotov approved the plan; on December 12, 1940, the Politburo passed a corresponding resolution, which initially extended to 1991 people. According to the Soviet files, around 3,500 people had left Lithuania via Siberia by August 1941. The state travel agency Intourist , which is responsible for foreigners, charged five times higher prices than usual for the tickets, and the total income for the Soviet side amounted to around 1,000,000 rubles (180,000 US dollars). In this way only people with the appropriate means could leave the country.

Sugihara continued to issue handwritten visas (allegedly he spent 18-20 hours on them every day) and issued the amount of visas that would otherwise be common in a month every day. He was forced to leave his post on September 4th as the consulate was closed. By that time he had already issued thousands of visas to Jews, many to heads of families who could take the entire family with them. Witnesses testified that he issued visas on the train and threw them out of the train window while the train was leaving Kaunas station for Berlin.

The number of visas issued is controversial and ranges from 2,139 to 10,000, more likely the lower range, although family visas have also been issued for several people, which may explain the higher numbers. However, Polish resistance groups also produced fake visas. A group of 30 people "Jakub Goldberg" arrived in Tsuruga one day , from where they were sent back to Nakhodka .

Many refugees used their visas to travel through the Soviet Union to Kobe , Japan, where there was a Russian Jewish community. From here about 1,000 traveled to other destinations, such as the USA and the British Mandate in Palestine . The rest had to stay in Japan until they were deported to the Japanese-occupied Shanghai , where there was also a large Jewish refugee community. They stayed here until the surrender of Japan (September 1945). At that time 20,000 Jews lived in the Shanghai ghetto , many of whom survived with the help of Sugihara and Zwartendijk.

Despite German pressure on the Japanese government to either extradite or kill the Jewish refugees, the government protected the group. Why this was so is debatable:

  • It was in return for a $ 196 million loan from a Jewish banker from New York, Jacob Schiff , to Japan. These funds would have helped victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905.
  • Some Japanese leaders would have read anti-Semitic tracts that ascribed wealth and power to the Jews, traits that the Japanese Empire found desirable. These considerations were part of the so-called Fugu Plan , which, however, was never officially implemented by Japan.

In 2015, Japan applied to Unesco for around 250 original documents from its work, which enabled thousands of Jews to survive before the Holocaust, to be recognized as World Document Heritage by UNESCO (which was supposed to take place in 2017, but was ultimately rejected in 2018 because of at least partially falsified documents ). These include numerous visa documents issued by Chiune. Doubts have been expressed about the authenticity of individual handwritten documents by Sugihara. The dispute should be resolved by Unesco.

resignation

The Japanese Foreign Ministry continued to require Sugihara's language and organizational skills and decided to postpone disciplinary action against him until he was no longer needed. Sugihara served as consul general in Prague in Czechoslovakia , in 1941 in Königsberg and the embassy in Bucharest . When Red Army troops marched into Romania, Sugihara and his family were interned in a POW camp for 18 months. They were released in 1946 and returned to Japan via the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Nakhodka port .

In 1947, the Japanese Foreign Ministry asked him to resign, nominally because of a desired downsizing of the agency, but perhaps also because of his actions in Lithuania. According to some sources, the Foreign Ministry told Sugihara that he would be fired because of "this incident in Lithuania".

In October 1991, the ministry informed Sugihara's family that his resignation was part of a staff reorganization shortly after the war ended. The State Department issued a position paper on March 24, 2006 that there was no evidence that the Department had disciplined Sugihara. The ministry said Sugihara was one of many diplomats who voluntarily resigned, but that the individual reasons for his resignation were "difficult to confirm". The ministry praised Sugihara's behavior as a "courageous and humanitarian decision".

Next life

Sugihara moved to Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture . He began working for an export company as general manager for the US military postal service. He later lived in the Soviet Union for two decades.

In 1968 Jehoshua Nishri, economic attaché of the Israeli embassy in Tokyo and one of the survivors thanks to Sugihara, found him and contacted him. In 1969 Sugihara visited Israel and was received by the Israeli government. Sugihara survivors began lobbying for him to be honored as Righteous Among the Nations , which was finally achieved in 1984.

In 1985, 45 years after the Soviet invasion of Lithuania, he was asked why he did this. Sugihara gave two reasons: that these refugees were human beings and that they simply needed help.

Chiune Sugihara died on July 31, 1986.

Honors

  • In 1984, the Israeli Holocaust Memorial honored Yad Vashem Sugihara as Righteous Among the Nations . Sugihara was too sick to go to Israel; his wife and daughter accepted the honor for him.
  • The Sugihara streets in Netanya , Israel, Kaunas and Vilnius (Lithuania) as well as the asteroid (25893) Sugihara are named after him.
  • The Chiune Sugihara Memorial in his (controversial) birthplace of Yaotsu was built in his honor by residents of the city.
  • A bronze statue in Nagoya has been showing him since 2018, handing out visas to a refugee family.
  • In 2019, on the anniversary of the start of visa issuance, Sugihara was honored by the search engine Google with a doodle in the form of a passport.

  • Memorial stone for Chiune Sugihara in Waseda University , Japan

  • Hill of Humanity , monument in honor of Chiune Sugiharas in Yaotsu, Japan

  • Sugihara Chiune Memorial Museum in his (controversial) birthplace of Yaotsu, Japan

  • Sugihara Street in Netanya , Israel. In addition, streets in Kaunas and Vilnius (Lithuania) are named after him.

  • Sugihara's monument in Vilnius , Lithuania, erected in 1992

  • Memorial plaque to Sugihara on the former Japanese consulate building in Kaunas, Lithuania

  • Postage stamp from Lithuania in honor of Sugihara, 2004

  • Tree planting in the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations in honor of Sugiharas in Yad Vashem , Jerusalem, Israel

  • Stele and tree planting in honor of Chiune and Yukiko Sugiharas in the Garden of the Righteous of the World in Padua , Italy

  • Chiune Sugihara's grave in Kamakura Cemetery, Kanagawa Prefecture , Japan

  • Sugihara Street in Jaffa

  • Ceremonial inauguration of the Sugiharas Memorial, Zuiryo

Aliases

Sugihara is also known as Sempo Sugiwara or Chiune Sempo Sugihara . Sugiwara Sempo was a pseudonym he used while working in the Soviet Union from 1960 to 1975 to avoid Soviet authorities identifying him as the diplomat who fooled them in 1932 and also got a good deal for Japan had when Japan bought the North Manchurian Railway. Sempo is actually not another name, just a different reading, namely the on reading of Kanji 千畝 instead of the Kun reading Chiune . Similarly, Sugiwara is an alternate pronunciation of his family name 杉原 . Sempo was therefore not his " intermediate name ".

See also

literature

  • Yukiko Sugihara: Visas for Life. Edu-Comm Plus, San Francisco 1995, ISBN 0-9649674-0-5 (translation into English by Rokusennin no Inochi no Visa. 1990).
  • Yutaka Taniuchi: The miraculous visas - Chiune Sugihara and the story of the 6000 Jews. Gefen Books, New York 2001, ISBN 978-4-89798-565-7 .
  • Seishiro Sugihara, Norman Hu, Chiune Sugihara and Japan's Foreign Ministry: Between Incompetence and Culpability. University Press of America, 2001, ISBN 978-0-7618-1971-4 .
  • Amleto Vespa: Secret Agent of Japan: A Handbook to Japanese Imperialism. Victor Gollancz, London 1938.
  • Herman Dicker: Wanderers and Settlers in the Far East. Twayne Publishers, New York 1962.
  • Abraham Kotsuji: From Tokyo to Jerusalem. Torath HaAdam Institute, 1975.
  • David Kranzler : Japanese, Nazis and Jews. Ktav Publishing House, Hoboken, NJ 1976.
  • John J. Stephan: The Russian Fascists. Tragedy and Farce in Exile, 1925-1945. Hamish Hamilton, London 1978.
  • Beth Hatefutsoth: Passage Through China: The Jewish Communities of Harbin, Tientsin and Shanghai. The Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, Tel Aviv 1986.
  • Samuil Manski: With God's Help. Northwestern University, 1990.
  • Solly Ganor: Light One Candle. A Survivor's Tale from Lithuania to Jerusalem. Kodansha International, New York 1995.
  • Eric Saul: Visas for Life: The Remarkable Story of Chiune & Yukiko Sugihara and the Rescue of Thousands of Jews. Holocaust Oral History Project, San Francisco 1995.
  • George Passelecq, Bernard Suchecky: L'Encyclique cachée de Pie XI. Une occasion manquée de l'Eglise face à l'antisémitisme. La Découverte, Paris 1995.
  • David S. Wyman (Ed.): The World reacts to the Holocaust. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore / London 1996.
  • Yaacov Liberman: My China: Jewish Life in the Orient 1900–1950. Gefen Books, Jerusalem 1998.
  • Pamela Rotner Sakamoto: Japanese Diplomats and Jewish Refugees. Praeger Publishers, Westport, CT 1998.
  • John Cornwell: Hitler's Pope. The Secret History of Pius XII. Viking, New York 1999.
  • Alison Leslie Gold: A Special Fate. Chiune Sugihara. Scholastic, New York 2000.
  • Astrid Freyeisen: Shanghai and the politics of the Third Reich. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000.
  • Dom Lee, Ken Mochizuki: Passage to Freedom. The Sugihara Story. Lee & Low Books, New York 2003.
  • David Alvarez, Robert A. Graham: Nothing sacred. Nazi Espionage against the Vatican 1939-1945. Frank Cass, London 2003.
  • Vincas Bartusevičius, Joachim Tauber, Wolfram Wette : Holocaust in Lithuania. War, murder of Jews and collaboration in 1941. Böhlau, Vienna 2003.
  • Alvydas Nikzentaitis: The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews. Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam 2004.
  • Carl L. Steinhouse: Righteous and Courageous. AuthorHouse, Bloomington, Indiana 2004.
  • Samuel Iwry: To Wear the Dust of War: From Bialystok to Shanghai to the Promised Land. An oral history. Palgrave Macmillan, London 2004.
  • Tessa Stirling, Daria Nałęcz, Tadeusz Dubicki: Intelligence Co-operation between Poland and Great Britain during World War II. Vol. 1. Vallentine Mitchell, London 2005.
  • Walter Schellenberg : The Memoirs of Hitler's Spymaster. André Deutsch, London 2006.
  • Mordecai Paldiel : Diplomat heros of the Holocaust. KTAV Publishing House, New York 2007.
  • Alfred Erich Senn: Lithuania 1940: Revolution from above. Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam 2007.
  • Martin Kaneko: The Jewish policy of the Japanese war government. Metropol, Berlin 2008.
  • Reinhard R. Deorries: Hitler's Intelligence Chief: Walter Schellenberg. Enigma Books, New York 2009.
  • Michaël Prazan: Task Force. Ed. du Seuil, Paris 2010.
  • Miriam Bistrović: Anti-Semitism and Philosemitism in Japan. Plain text, Essen 2011.
  • JWM Chapman: The Polish Connection: Japan, Poland and the Axis Alliance. Proceedings of the British Association for Japanese Studies. V. 2. 1977.
  • Dina Porat : The Holocaust in Lithuania: Some Unique Aspects. In: David Cesarani (Ed.): The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation. Routledge, London 1994, pp. 159-175.
  • JWM Chapman ' Japan in Poland's Secret Neighborhood War . In: Japan Forum. No.2, 1995.
  • Ewa Pałasz-Rutkowska, Andrzej T. Romer: Polish-Japanese co-operation during World War II . In: Japan Forum. No.7, 1995.
  • Sabine Breuillard: L'Affaire Kaspé revisitée . In: Revues des études slaves. Vol. 73, 2001, pp. 337-372.
  • Gerhard Krebs : The Jews and the Far East ( Memento from November 5, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 176 kB), NOAG 175-176, 2004.
  • Gerhard Krebs: The Jewish Problem in Japanese-German Relations 1933–1945. In: Bruce Reynolds (Ed.): Japan in Fascist Era. New York 2004.
  • Jonathan Goldstein: The Case of Jan Zwartendijk in Lithuania, 1940. In: Deffry M. Diefendorf (Ed.): New Currents in Holocaust Research, Lessons and Legacies. Vol. VI. Northwestern University Press, 2004.
  • Hideko Mitsui: Longing for the Other: traitors' cosmopolitanism . In: Social Anthropology. Vol 18, Issue 4, November 2010, European Association of Social Anthropologists.
  • George Johnstone: Japan's Sugihara came to Jews' rescue during WWII . In: Investor's Business Daily. December 8, 2011.

Films and media

  • On August 6, 2000, the documentary Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness premiered at the Hollywood Film Festival.
  • On October 11, 2005, Yomiuri TV (Osaka) broadcast a two-hour film Nihon no Schindler: Sugihara Chiune Monogatari: Rokusen-nin no Inochi no Visa ( 日本 の シ ン ド ラ ー 杉原 千畝 物語 六千 人 の 命 の ビ ザ , dt. "Japan's Schindler: The story of Chiune Sugihara: Visa of Life for 6000 People ”) about Sugihara, which was based on his wife's book.
  • Chris Donahue made a 1997 film about Sugihara called Visas and Virtue , which won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 1998.
  • On December 5, 2015, the film adaptation of Sugihara's life Sugihara Chiune (international: Persona Non Grata ) was released in Japan. The main actor is Toshiaki Karasawa.

Web links

Commons : Chiune Sugihara  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ conVistaAlMar.com.ar: Sempo ”Chiune” Sugihara, Japanese Savior. In: The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation. Retrieved July 29, 2019 (American English).
  2. ↑ The Japanese Man Who Saved 6,000 Jews With His Handwriting
  3. ↑ 世界 記憶 遺産 に 申請 、 杉原 千畝 「命 の ビ ザ」 手記 に 改 竄 疑惑 四 男 が 語 る . In: Weekly Shincho , November 2, 2016. Retrieved June 29, 2017. 
  4. ↑ Heinz Eberhard Maul, Japan und die Juden - Study on the Jewish policy of the Japanese Empire during the time of National Socialism 1933-1945 , dissertation Bonn 2000, p. 157. Digitized . Retrieved May 18, 2017.
  5. ↑ Dr. Ewa Palasz-Rutkowska ( Memento of the original from July 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.tiu.ac.jp
  6. ↑ Gennady Kostyrčenko: Tajnaja politika Stalina. Vlast 'i antisemitizm. Novaya versija. Čast 'I. Moscow 2015, pp. 304-306.
  7. ↑ Il'ja Al'tman : Žertvy nenavisti: Cholokost v SSSR 1941-1945 vs. Moscow 2002, pp. 300-302.
  8. ^ Marvin Tokayer, Mary Swartz: The Fugu Plan: The Untold Story Of The Japanese And The Jews During World War II ISBN 965-229-329-6
  9. ↑ Chiune Sugihara - Japan's 'Schindler': A genuine hero tangled in a web of myth
  10. ↑ 世界 記憶 遺産 に 申請 、 杉原 千畝 「命 の ビ ザ」 手記 に 改 竄 疑惑 四 男 が 語 る . In: Weekly Shincho , November 2, 2016. Retrieved June 29, 2017. 
  11. ↑ Chiune Sugihara on the Yad Vashem website (accessed November 18, 2015)
  12. ↑ 世界 記憶 遺産 に 申請 、 杉原 千畝 「命 の ビ ザ」 手記 に 改 竄 疑惑 四 男 が 語 る . In: Weekly Shincho , November 2, 2016. Retrieved June 29, 2017. 
  13. ↑ nytimes.com October 15, 2018: The Japanese Man Who Saved 6,000 Jews With His Handwriting (Guest contribution by Rabbi David Wolpe after a speech in Nagoya)
  14. ↑ Jens Minor: Chiune Sugihara: Google honors 'Japanese Schindler' with a passport doodle (drafts & interview) - GWB. In: GoogleWatchBlog. July 28, 2019, accessed on July 28, 2019 (German).
  15. ↑ 世界 記憶 遺産 に 申請 、 杉原 千畝 「命 の ビ ザ」 手記 に 改 竄 疑惑 四 男 が 語 る . In: Weekly Shincho , November 2, 2016. Retrieved June 29, 2017. 
  16. ↑ Film info at cbn news
personal data
SURNAME Sugihara, Chiune
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 杉原 千畝 (Japanese); Sugiwara Sempo (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese diplomat who saved thousands of Jews
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Yaotsu , Kamo-gun , Gifu Prefecture
DATE OF DEATH July 31, 1986
Place of death Fujisawa