1940July–August 1940 · Kaunas

Chiune Sugihara's visas for life

The modest two-storey house in Kaunas that held the Japanese consulate where Chiune Sugihara issued visas — Photo: Bonio. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

As the Soviet Union took over Lithuania in summer 1940, thousands of Jewish refugees from Poland looked for a way out. Japan's vice-consul in Kaunas, Chiune Sugihara, wrote around 2,000 transit visas against his government's orders, many covering whole families, while the Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk named Curaçao as their destination. Several thousand people escaped across Siberia to Japan and beyond.