Chiune Sugihara Museum
Vilnius used to have such a large Jewish population that it was known as the Jerusalem of the North. There were more than 100 synagogues, but now there is only one remaining. Almost all of the Jews living in Vilnius died or fled during World War 2.
I visited the Chiune Sugihara museum in Kaunas in Lithuania. Lots of Jewish people tried to flee Soviet-controlled Lithuania before the Nazis arrived. The Soviets would let them leave if they had visas for another country. These were very difficult to get.
Chiune Sugihara was the Japanese vice-consul in Lithuania. He asked Tokyo several times for permission to grant visas to Jewish people, but didn’t receive any response.
So he went ahead anyway and issued several thousand visas. It’s estimated that he saved at least 6000 lives.
After the war he was dismissed from his post by the Japanese government. For years he remained virtually unknown, until one of the survivors tracked him down. Sugihara was eventually pronounced as a righteous person by the government of Israel and he and his descendants were granted perpetual Israeli citizenship.
The museum has some information about his life and the people he saved. A lot of the visitors to the museum are Japanese and the information is in Japanese.
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Tags: Eastern Europe, History, Japan, Lithuania, Travel
Posted by Aidan on Mon 04 Jan 2010 at 07:00 under Culture, Culture - Japan, Travel, Travel - World | Permalink