Lithuanians honor Japanese diplomat

KAUNAS - Persistent rain on May 19 was not enough to keep about 100
Lithuanian intellectuals from the official opening of Sugihara House in
the quiet Zaliakalnis neighborhood in Kaunas. The house was the site
of the Japanese consulate in Lithuania until the first Soviet invasion
in 1941.

Sempo (Chiune) Sugihara (b. 1900, d.1986) was the Japanese Consul to
Lithuania from 1939 to 1940. Breaking with existing Japanese policy, he
issued transit visas through Russia to Japan for 10,000 Lithuanian,
Polish and German Jews who would otherwise have perished in the
Holocaust. Even after being asked to leave Lithuania, he continued
issuing visas from his seat on the train as it was leaving Kaunas,
tossing them through the window to the crowd gathered on the platform.

In 1947, his actions earned him dismissal from the Japanese diplomatic
corps for his disobedience of Japanese policy. This was a major blow to
the whole Sugihara family in a country where a person's career and
reputation are so vitally important to a person's self-esteem.

He was honored by Israel in 1984. Japan finally gave him back his place
in history in 1992 by erecting a memorial in his home city of Yoatsu.
His widow Yukiko recently attended a ceremony in his memory at the
Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

Sugihara House in Kaunas will include a small museum in his honor, but
will primarily serve as an educational and cultural facility for
Lithuanian and Japanese people. There are presently 50 students
enrolled in Japanese studies at Kaunas' Vytautas Magnus University.

Legally the house belongs to Rimas Tankunas, Lithuania's ambassador to
Estonia. He has magnanimously agreed to sell it to the Sugihara Visas
for the Life Foundation. The Japanese government, a group of Belgian
intellectuals and businesspeople as well as other private donors fund
the foundation.

The ceremony took place outside the house by the front gate that bears
the inscription "The Gate of Hope." Masaaki Orita, Japan's ambassador
to Lithuania, gave a heartfelt speech.

"I am moved from my heart today. Even the sky has been touched," he
said in reference to the drizzling rain. "Chiune Sugihara acted
according to his own convictions of racial equality and human values. I
am his diplomatic successor and am proud of what he did for the people.
I hope this house is a place where all people, but especially
Lithuanians and Japanese, can get together and learn the history of
their relations. We share the same human past," he said.

Markas Zingeris, a professor at VMU whose mother perished during the
Holocaust, also spoke.

"Sugihara looked at people's faces and saw persecuted people, not
races or collectives. He broke diplomatic rules to save them. There is
much talk of radicalism and extremism in Kaunas today and yet here we
have a crowd of enlightened people who have gathered under the light of
Sugihara," he said.

For further information:
Sugihara Foundation
Vaizganto g.30
Kaunas, Lithuania
Tel. 370-(2)7-423277
http:www.vdu.lt/sugihara
E-mail:[email protected]