In Search Of Sugihara The Elusive Japanese Diplomat Who Risked His Life To Rescue 10 000 Jews From The Holocaust

Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kovno, Lithuania, honored in 1984 by Yad Vashem as a “Righteous Among the Nations,” issued transit visas to thousands of Jewsin 1940, saving them from almost certain death in Nazi-occupied Europe. From extensive archival research and interviews — of survivors, fellow students in Harbin, China, diplomats who knew Sugihara and family members —, Hillel Levine reconstructs the fascinating story of this diplomat, spy and Russia expert who singlehandedly built a “conspiracy of goodness.” “Mr. Levine dug deep into wartime archives and traveled all over the world in search of Sugihara’s friends and relatives, and surviving eyewitnesses of his extraordinary acts ... [researched] Japanese culture, folklore, diplomacy, imperialism and attitudes toward Jews and the West ... In Search of Sugihara finally inspires you to believe that in a time of great evil a good man threw caution to the winds and acted out of simple humanity.” — Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times “This remarkable biography is, in the author’s words, a study of the ‘banality of good.’ Honored in Israel and Japan, yet still largely unknown in the West, Japanese diplomat and spy Chiune Sugihara, with this book, joins the ranks of Raoul Wallenberg, Oskar Schindler and other rescuers of Jews escaping Nazi persecution ... In Levine’s compelling analysis, Sugihara’s rescue effort was motivated by love of life and a strong sense of justice, not by any special relationship to Jews or driving obsession — an ordinary man turned extraordinary hero.” — Publishers Weekly “On the basis of considerable research, including interviews with survivors, friends, and relatives, official records, and Sugihara’s scant memoirs, Levine presents the available facts ... Sugihara’s story is ultimately a fascinating addition to Holocaust literature and a valuable historical footnote.” — Kirkus Reviews “One of a handful of landmark books in our desperately needed process of just beginning to explore the strange mystery of human goodness.” — M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled “Sugihara is unique because he demonstrated that every individual is empowered to resist tyranny and that one can act in accordance to the dictates of a higher moral authority that advocates justice, humanity, and compassion to all mankind. Hillel Levine is to be commended for bringing attention to this unsung hero of the Holocaust and for telling us, with historical depth and literary eloquence, of the unknown dimensions of this incredible story.” — Tom Lantos, US Congress “This is history as it was, and history as it might have been. Hillel Levine has relentlessly uncovered one of the most thrilling and unknown stories of World War II and the Holocaust. He has shown what one courageous diplomat in one small country did to make a real difference in those darkest of times. He has also given us the account of an improbable but genuine hero whose name should be inscribed with the other great figures of the resistance.” — Harvey Cox, Thomas Professor of Divinity, Harvard University

When the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany partitioned Poland in September of 1939, thousands of Jews fled Poland into Lithuania and fled across the USSR to Japan. With the help of Jan Zwartendijk, acting Dutch consul, and Chiune Sugihara, Japan's vice consul in Lithuania, the refugees obtained documents for their perilous escape from Nazi persecution. From Japan, many refugees moved on to Dutch-controlled Curacao or other final destinations. Decades after the war, and one year before his death in 1986, Sugihara was finally honored by Israel with the "Righteous Among the Nations" Award for the help he gave to the Jews in 1940. He also received the Raoul Wallenburg Award posthumously in 1990. However, in Japan little was known about Sugihara's heroic actions for more than five decades. The author, Seishiro Sugihara (no relation to Chiune), reveals a pattern of deception and obfuscation by Japan's foreign ministry to obstruct recognition of Sugihara's philanthropy. The Sugihara episode, the author contends, is only one in a long line of scandalous cover-ups which have plagued the Ministry, including its ill-fated Twenty-One Demands upon Nationalist China in 1915; and more infamously the failure of its Washington Embassy to follow orders and deliver the "declaration of war" on December 7, 1941 which resulted in the Pearl Harbor operation being stigmatized as a "sneak attack." His book is the first to demonstrate that, while Japan's military was abolished during the Occupation, the Foreign Ministry secured its own future at the expense of Japan and the Japanese people, and deliberately and systematically placed Sugihara's act of kindness beyond public scrutiny.

Deals with those embassy and consular workers throughout German-occupied Europe who, through granting visas to Jews or obtaining consular protection for them, rescued thousands of lives. Most of these diplomats acted contrary to their governments' policies of non-admission of Jews and infringed on instructions given to them or at least the spirit of these instructions, thereby risking their careers and sometimes their lives. Arranged according to the countries where these diplomats were accredited: Germany, Austria, Lithuania, France, Denmark, Hungary, and others. Ch. 7 (pp. 111-200), "Budapest: The Apocalypse", deals with events in Budapest in 1944, when diplomats of various countries, by concerted efforts, granted visas and consular protection to ca. 25,000 Jews. Dwells especially on the activities of Frank Foley, Jan Zwartendijk, Sempo Sugihara, Luiz Martins de Souza Dantas, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, Carl Lutz, Raoul Wallenberg, Giorgio Perlasca, and Angelo Rotta.

This book assesses the plight of the European Jewish refugees who fled to Japanese-occupied China during the Second World War. It examines the Nationalist government's policy towards the Jewish refugee issue and the most thorough and subtle analysis of Japanese diplomacy concerning this matter. The story of the wartime "Shanghai Jews" is not merely a side-bar to the history of modern China or modern Japan. It is a story that illuminates how the "Jewish issue" complicated the relationships among China, Japan, Germany, and the United States before and during World War Two. Both the Chinese Nationalist government and the Japanese occupation authorities thought very carefully about the Shanghai Jews and how they could be used to win international financial and political support in their war against one another. Thus, the Holocaust had complicated repercussions that extended far beyond Europe. The diaspora of Jews to East Asia in the era of the Second World War is a rich and complex story that deserves our attention as well. Firmly grounded in archival sources from the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, Britain, and Israel, this book is comparative and transnational in scope and makes an important contribution to the international history of the period.

Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Jewish Responses to Persecution: Volume II, 1938–1940 is the second volume of the five-volume set within the series "Documenting Life and Destruction: Holocaust Sources in Context." This volume brings together in an accessible historical narrative a broad range of documents—including diaries, letters, speeches, newspaper articles, reports, Jewish identity cards, and personal photographs—from Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe and beyond Europe's borders. The volume skillfully illuminates the daily lives of a diverse range of Jews who suffered under Nazism, their coping strategies, and their efforts to assess the implications for the present and future of the persecution they faced during this period. Volume II begins with Kristallnacht in 1938 and continues through the Jewish flight out of Germany, the onset of World War II, the forced relocation of the Jews of Europe to the East, and the formation of Jewish ghettos, particularly in Poland. The twelve chapters, divided into four parts, track the trajectory of German expansion and anti-Jewish policies chronologically, attesting to a clear progression of persecution over time and space. At the same time, they reflect the vast differences in the responses of Jewish communities, groups, and individuals within and beyond the Germans' grasp, differences that resulted both from the unevenness of the Reich's policy toward Jews as well as the varied backgrounds, traditions, expectations, and life histories of Jews affected by German policy. This volume raises essential questions, such as: What was the spectrum of Jewish perceptions and actions under Nazi domination? How did Jews affected directly, or others standing on the outside, view the situation? In what ways were Jews able to influence their own fate under persecution? What role did Jewish tradition play in how the present and future were interpreted? The answers inherent in the documents are often varied or inconclusive; nonetheless these sources add considerably to our understanding of the Holocaust.

The second edition of this book frames the Holocaust as a catastrophe emerging from varied international responses to the Jewish question during an age of global crisis and war. The chapters are arranged chronologically, thematically, and geographically, reflecting how persecution, responses, and experience varied over time and place, conveying a sense of the Holocaust’s complexity. Fully updated, this edition incorporates the past decade’s scholarship concerning perpetrators, victims, and bystanders from political, national, and gendered perspectives. It also frames the Holocaust within the broader genocide perspective and within current debates on memory politics and causation. Global in approach and supported by images, maps, diverse voices, and suggestions for further reading, this is the ideal textbook for students of this catastrophic period in world history.

The Grand Voyage on the Holland America flagship Amsterdam to Asia and the Pacific remains one of the most memorable adventures I have had the privilege of being part of. I was thrilled to join the ship in San Diego California, listening to world-class scholars offering in-depth lectures on the places we would visit and to then see these countries first-hand. This volume reviews the port of San Diego, the point of departure, and the ship's visits to several ports of call in Japan. While these ports were interesting, research on Japan’s long reach of history offers up many troubling aspects of this unique people. I pondered their history and unique way of looking at themselves and the rest of the world. How is it possible, for example, for a people to create the highest forms of etiquette and graceful decorum, and to then conduct themselves with utter contempt for basic morality towards others? During World War Two, the massacres committed by the Japanese army in nearly every quadrant of their military and political reach during the Showa Empire begs the question of how common decency and ethical behavior can be so thoroughly absent as if it never existed? Even today, the Japanese government refuses to acknowledge or offer a public apology for wartime acts done during this period. I explore this very troubling issue, wondering where the lines of civility and conformity begin and end. The Japanese are a strange people, and I was frustrated at these two extremes of exemplary behavior and simultaneous contempt of others. It is my contention that a refusal to acknowledge the past, in conjunction with a reappraisal of what went wrong in that previous leadership, will eventually and inevitably force this issue into the present. There is therefore a huge divergence between the Germans and the Japanese. The former reappraised their horrific past, recognizing that a change from that past is a mandatory aspect of their social discourse. Even a Nazi salute in Germany is outlawed and a criminal offense. In contrast, the Japanese have barely tolerated criticisms of its own leaders during that period of darkness. This is a troubling volume in which I explore with an open mind, wondering if there is an answer to these troubling questions. In the Shinto Directive, formulated and implemented by General MacArthur following Japan's unconditional surrender, formalized belief in the emperor's divinity was outlawed. Today, beautiful Shinto shrines dot the Japanese countryside. Citizens can be seen washing hands and rinsing their mouths before entering these sacred spaces, then lighting incense while offering a prayer. Inevitably, I wonder as to the moral component of a people who are outwardly decorous, even recreating the common toothpick into a form of exceptional grace, while being unable to acknowledge common humanity. There are also modern aspects of Japanese society that are difficult to comprehend. Thousands of Japanese youth, for reasons that defy common sense, give up on themselves and their future by adopting the hikikomori lifestyle, living in their parent’s home, not interacting with their peers, and even refusing to emerge from their bedrooms for decades. Parents tolerate this odd behavior, refusing to confront their child, even refusing to acknowledge the presence of their child as the years pass. Similarly, are the jouhatsu, people who suddenly and without the slightest outward change, suddenly and inexplicably, disappear. Desperate to find the loved one, the government refuses to assist because of Japanese strict privacy laws. I describe these aspects of Japanese society, together with others similarly different from Western society. These are aspects of the ‘Asian face’ – that inscrutable and essentially unknown quantum, so different from that of the West. Knowing the facts, together with the statistics accompanying those facts, does not imply understanding the. As a Westerner, I review these manifestations without understanding the Japanese ‘soul,’ its core identity and substance. I can, therefore, only recount the facts and leave the rest to the reader. These questions aside, I very much enjoyed walking Japanese streets, riding its trains, and seeing its people. I also had occasion to chat with several Japanese who expressed surprise at my awareness of their culture, while I was unable to adequately answer my queries. And they too seemed perplexed by my queries, confounded by the imponderables dividing the Western the Eastern way of living a life.