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Historic Figures Who Set Out to Save Jews From the Holocaust

Khalid Elhassan December 15, 2020 32 min

Hanns Albin Rauter - World War II — A Dutch Resistance cell during WWII. For God and Country

15. Sugihara Kept Up His Efforts to Save Jews to the Literal Last Minute

A Soviet express train ticket used by Jews traveling on the Trans Siberian Railway. Wikimedia

Chiune Sugihara had the refugees call him “Sempo” – the Sino-Japanese reading of his name’s Japanese characters – because it was easier for them to pronounce than his given name. He also got in touch with Soviet officials, and convinced them to let the Jewish refugees travel across the USSR via the Trans Siberian Railway. When they balked, he overcame their intransigence by sweetening the deal for corrupt bureaucrats when necessary, arranging for the Jews to pay them five times the normal ticket price.

It finally ended on September 4^th, 1940, when Sugihara had to leave because the consulate was about to close. He kept writing visas en route from his hotel to Kovno’s train station, and continued doing so on the train, throwing visas out the window into the crowd of desperate refugees. As the train began pulling away, he started throwing blank sheets out the window, containing only his signature and the consulate’s seal, so they could be filled in and turned into visas. His final words to those he was trying to save were: “Please forgive me. I cannot write anymore. I wish you the best“.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.