In July 1940, Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese vice-consul in Kaunas, Lithuania, woke to find hundreds of Jewish refugees gathered outside his consulate. They had fled Poland and were seeking transit visas through Japan to escape the advancing Nazi death machine.

Sugihara cabled Tokyo three times requesting permission to issue the visas. Three times he was refused. Japan's alliance with Germany made the request politically impossible.

The Decision

Sugihara discussed the situation with his wife, Yukiko. He knew that defying Tokyo would end his diplomatic career. He also knew that the people outside his door would die without his help.

"I may have to disobey my government," he told his wife, "but if I don't, I would be disobeying God."

He began writing visas. For the next 29 days, he hand-wrote transit visas for up to 18 hours a day, producing hundreds per day when the normal output was a handful. His wife helped by massaging his cramped writing hand at the end of each day. A refugee later recalled that Sugihara's hand was so swollen by the end that he could barely grip the pen.

The Last Visas

When the Soviet Union ordered the consulate closed in September 1940, Sugihara continued writing visas from his hotel room. On the morning of his departure, he wrote visas from the window of his train as it pulled out of the station, passing them through the window to desperate hands. He threw his consul stamp to a refugee on the platform. His last words as the train departed were: "Please forgive me. I cannot write anymore. I wish you the best."

Approximately 6,000 Jews escaped through the visas Sugihara issued. Because many of the visa holders had families, some historians believe the number of people saved reaches 10,000. These refugees traveled across the Soviet Union by rail and sailed from Vladivostok to Kobe, Japan, and later to Shanghai.

After the war, Sugihara was discharged from the Japanese diplomatic service. He worked in obscurity for years before being recognized by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations in 1985. He died in 1986. Today, it is estimated that there are over 100,000 descendants of the people he saved.