The Just
how six unlikely heroes saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust
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- $27.99
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- $27.99
Publisher Description
The remarkable story of how a consul and his allies helped save thousands of Jews from the Holocaust in one of the greatest rescue operations of the twentieth century.
In May 1940, Jan Zwartendijk, the director of the Lithuanian branch of the Philips electrical-goods company, stepped into history when he accepted the honorary role of Dutch consul.
In Kaunas, the capital of Lithuania, desperate Jewish refugees faced annihilation in the Holocaust. That was when Zwartendijk, with the help of Chiune Sugihara, the consul for Japan, and the Dutch ambassador in Riga, Latvia — chose to break his country’s diplomatic rules. He opened up a possible route to freedom through the ruse of issuing visas to the Dutch colony of Curaçao on the other side of the world. Thanks to these visas, and Sugihara’s approval of onward passage, many Jews — up to 10,000 — were able to travel on the Trans-Siberian Express all through Soviet Russia to Vladivostok, further to Japan, and onwards to China.
Most of the Jews whom Zwartendijk helped escape survived the war, and they and their descendants settled in America, Canada, Australia, and other countries. Zwartendijk and Sugihara were true heroes, and yet they were both shunned by their own countries after the war, and their courageous, unstinting actions have remained relatively unknown.
In The Just, renowned Dutch author Jan Brokken wrests this heroic story from oblivion and traces the journeys of a number of the rescued Jews. This epic narrative shows how, even in life-threatening circumstances, some people make the right choice at the right time. It is a lesson in character and courage.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brokken (The Rainbird) provides an inspirational and richly detailed look at bureaucratic efforts to help Jews escape Europe in the early years of WWII. He centers the narrative on two diplomats in Kaunas, Lithuania: Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk and Japanese consul Chiune Sugihara. After Soviet forces occupied Lithuania, Dutch Jews and Polish Jewish refugees asked Zwartendijk to note on their travel documents that no visa was necessary for admission to Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles. Though permission from the governor of the Netherlands Antilles was required, Zwartendijk purposefully omitted that fact from the papers he signed. While Sugihara's primary duty was to provide Tokyo with intelligence on German and Soviet troop movements, he stuck his neck out by ignoring official protocols to issue transit visas for Japan. Between them, Brokken contends, Zwartendijk and Sugihara helped as many as 10,000 people escape. Other profile subjects include Ho Feng-Shan, of the Chinese consulate in Vienna, who distributed visas to Shanghai at a time when his country no longer had control of that city. Evocative portraits of his protagonists' family lives deepen Brokken's depictions of their hazardous actions. Readers will take heart from these obscure yet consequential acts of courage.
