The Lifesaver Visas
Most visas issued by Chiune Sugihara went to Jewish refugees who queued outside the Japanese consulate in Kovno, desperate to flee the Nazi menace. The Nazis, who had conquered Poland and divided it with the Soviets in 1939, had already started to rid their part of Poland of its Jewish inhabitants, and taken the first steps towards outright genocide. Within months, most professions were closed to Jews. They were expelled from the parts of Poland annexed to Germany, herded into ghettos in what was left of the country, and tens of thousands were murdered.
Life in Poland became literally unlivable for Jews. Against that backdrop, Sugihara’s consulate in neighboring Lithuania became a lifesaver for those fortunate enough to get there. After he had granted about 1800 visas, Tokyo noticed the unusually large number of visas being issued from their consulate in Kovno.
Until then, Kovno had been a backwater diplomatic outpost that saw little consular activity. So the Japanese Foreign Ministry sent Sugihara a cable, reminding him: “You must make sure that they [refugees] have finished their procedure for their entry visas and also they must possess the travel money or the money that they need during their stay in Japan. Otherwise, you should not give them the transit visa“.
Japan’s Foreign Ministry insisted that visas be granted only to those who had gone through the appropriate immigration procedures, and had adequate funds. Most people granted visas by Sugihara did not meet those criterion. In response to Tokyo’s cable, he acknowledged that had issued visas to people who had not satisfied all the requirements for transit or destination visas, and justified his actions.
