Chiune Sugihara: Unsung Hero of the Holocaust

The Holocaust, a point in time in which millions of people were murdered due to one man’s philosophy (if you can even call it that). However, handfuls of people resented this situation, going out of their way to help victims of this time. Their bravery was often met with consequences, normally death, however some prevailed. Among these people is a man named Chiune Sugihara. Sugihara saved thousands of people during that desolate time period and due to that he is and always will be considered a hero of the holocaust. Chiune Sugihara was born in Gifu Prefecture of Honshu Island, A bit north of Nagoya, ion January first 1900. He had graduated from Harbin Gakuen, a training center for experts on the Soviet Union and eventually negotiated the purchase of the North Manchurian Railroad in 1932. Because of his fluency in Russian, Japan sent him to the Lithuanian capital of Kuanas (which at the time was only the temporary capital). Sugihara had just managed to settle in when Hitler’s army had begun its invasion of Poland. Due to this invasion many Jewish refugees from Poland started flooding into Lithuania. While socializing with the refugees, they had told Sugihara

He had discussed the situation with his wife Yukiko as well as his children. Knowing that he could potentially lose his job and well as all respect, he finally made his decision to sign the visas. From July thirty-first to August twenty-eighth, Sugihara and his wife spent many countless hours signing the visas by hand. They managed to write around three hundred visas every day (for an example of sorts, three hundred was around the total amount a consul would do in a month) and he didn’t even stop to eat. Even on his train for Berlin he had continued giving out as many visas as he could, throwing them out of his train window. Before leaving, he gave the consul stamp to another refugee who then used it to save many more Jewish