← Back to the front page

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

14. Israel Labeled Chiune Sugihara as One of “The Righteous Among Nations”

Chiune Sugihara and his son in Israel, 1969. Wikimedia

Many of the Jewish refugees whom Sugihara had set out to save made it to Kobe, Japan, where there was a Jewish community. From there, most secured asylum visas to Canada, Australia, Palestine, the US, and Latin America. Sugihara’s visas – including family visas that allowed multiple people to travel together – saved the lives of roughly 6000 Jews. About 40,000 of their descendants are alive today because of his actions.

In 1985, Chiune Sugihara was named by the Israeli government as one of the “Righteous Among Nations” – an honorific used to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination. He is the only Japanese national to be so honored. He died a year later, in a hospital in Kamakura.

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.