The short film ‘Righteous Diplomacy’ is dedicated to Chiune Sugihara and other diplomats who played an important role in saving thousands of Jews during the Second World War. Acting individually, or in international clandestine networks, the diplomats defied the occupiers, and sometimes even their own governments, by allowing threatened Jews to flee to third-party countries. Such was the case of Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese vice-consul in Kaunas, Lithuania. In the six weeks preceding the closure of the Japanese consulate, in September 1940, Sugihara supplied thousands of Jews with transit visas to Japan — despite the fact that his country was an ally of Nazi Germany. He might have saved up to 6,000 Jews, although the exact number is unknown. His activities were made public in 1968 by one of those whom he had saved. As a result, in 1984, he was recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” by the World Holocaust Remembrance Center Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem. He is the only Japanese person, and one of around forty diplomats, to hold this honorary title.
'Righteous Diplomacy' short film is a part of educational package presenting biographies of the diplomats featured in the exhibition “Between Life and Death”:
Learn more about other educational materials: hi-storylessons.eu