A Special Fate: Chiune Sugihara: Hero of the Holocaust by Alison Leslie Gold

A Special Fate: Chiune Sugihara: Hero of the Holocaust by Alison Leslie Gold

2. Biography / Holocaust, Grades 6-8

3. The main character is Chiune Sugihara (1900-1986), a Japanese diplomat, who saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. The stories of Solly Ganor and Masha Bernstein, two children rescued by Sugihara’s visas, complement this heroic consul’s biography.

4. Plot

Born on the auspicious day of January 1, 1900, Sugihara was destined to make his mark on the new century. He began his fast-rising diplomatic career as an interpreter at the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He knew English, Chinese, French, and German and taught Russian part-time. His school’s motto--"Do much for others and expect little in return"--and his principles of responsibility, virtue, compassion, and self-denial served him well when he assumed his post at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania. Here the diplomat heard stories of Jews’ harrowing escape from Poland after the Nazi invasion in 1939, as well as tales of Jews being terrorized, sent to concentration camps, and murdered. After the Nazis quickly occupied Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France by 1940, Sugihara knew the worst was yet to come as Hitler (who had mocked the Japanese as "lacquered half-monkeys") forged an alliance with Japan’s Hirohito.

Jewish refugees crowded into Kaunas, desperate for transit visas to escape, and when Sugihara’s superiors in Tokyo rejected his repeated pleas to issue these exit visas, he disobeyed and chose to risk personal disgrace and his diplomatic career. The Soviet consul, impressed by Sugihara’s fluent Russian, agreed to allow Jewish refugees to travel through Russia on their way to Japan and then safe havens far beyond Europe. He worked with his wife for three weeks, sixteen hours daily, to write over 2,000 visas as refugees frantically clamored outside the building. When the Japanese consulate closed, he continued to write the visas at his hotel, then the train station; finally, he handed signed blank visas out the window of his departing train. Not until decades later did he find out his visas had saved lives.

The stories of two families exemplify the fates of Sugihara’s survivors. Masha Bernstein, eight, and her parents fled from Poland to Lithuania, where they fortunately got a visa. Although her father was imprisoned in Russia, Masha and her mother finally arrived in Chicago, where relatives sponsored them. Years later her parents reunited in Argentina. Over three million Polish Jews (out of 3.3 million prewar Jews in Poland) died. In contrast, the parents of Solly Ganor waited too long to use Sugihara’s visas. At sixteen, Solly, along with his parents and sister, suffered the horrors of several concentration camps. Miraculously, he survived (96% of Lithuania’s Jews did not) and immigrated to Israel after being liberated.

Sugihara held other European posts during the remainder of the war. With Japan’s surrender in August 1945, he, his wife, and three children were imprisoned in Russia until returning to Japan in 1947. Forced to resign from diplomatic service, he sold light bulbs door-to-door at one point; later he worked as a translator. In 1968 he traveled to Israel to meet some of the Jews he saved; one was an Israeli diplomat and signer of the country’s Declaration of Independence. Sugihara told his wife that he did not do anything special—he just followed his own conscience. He died in 1986. As fate would have it, three years later his wife was interviewed by a newspaper journalist—Masha Bernstein. The visas saved more than 6,000 others, and over 40,000 descendants are alive today, thanks to Sugihara.

5. Touchy areas:

Some may prefer to avoid books about the Holocaust entirely. Others may hesitate using this book in the classroom because of the realistic details that humanize the abstract concept of genocide of six million innocent people. An example of the graphic violence is the description of the slaughter of some 700 Jews on June 25, 1941, in Lithuania. Solly saw "blood-splattered walls" and "limbs of human beings that had been hacked off bodies and thrown into the street" and heard someone laughing about some drunk playing "soccer with Jewish heads" (120). Also, the Sugiharas’ prison experience is described vividly with references to lice, fleas, and filthy, stinking clothes. "Touchy areas," however, make up a very small portion of the book. How else can a writer make real for children today the horrific, unspeakable crimes against humanity over a half a century ago? How else can readers today understand the miracle of surviving the Holocaust?

6. Related titles:

Visas for Life, by Yukiko Sugihara (out of print); Light One Candle: A Survivor’s Tale from Lithuania to Jerusalem, by Solly Ganor (1995); Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story, by Ken Mochizuki, afterword by Hiroki Sugihara (1997); In Search of Sugihara, by Hillel Levine (1996).

7. Movies and plays: Visas and Virtue, by Chris Tashima (1997 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short); Schindler’s List, by Thomas Keneally; The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank.

Books: No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War, by Anita Lobel (1998); Kinderlager: An Oral History of Young Holocaust Survivors, by Milton J. Nieuwsma (1998); Night, by Elie Wiesel (1960); Four Perfect Pebbles, by Lila Perl and Marion Blumenthal Lazan (1996).

Photographs: Besides the photos in Gold’s book, two excellent sources for Holocaust photos appropriate for young adults are We Remember the Holocaust, by David A. Adler (1989) and Smoke and Ashes: The Story of the Holocaust, by Barbara Rogasky (1988).

Song: "Light One Candle," by Peter, Paul, and Mary

Web sites: Yahoo.com lists 276 Web pages on Sugihara. I highly recommend one about the Academy Award-winning documentary film Visas and Virtue: http://viscom.apanet.org/visas

8. Evaluation:

History comes alive in this biography of Chiune Sugihara. Although he is not known as well as Schindler, his heroic efforts resulted in one of the largest rescues of Jews during the Holocaust. The author’s lively, readable style and interesting photographs make this a first-rate biography as well as an inspiring, informative book about Holocaust survivors. While the switching back and forth among the narratives of Sugihara, Solly Ganor, and Masha Bernstein may be problematic for some, the book’s tale of courage and compassion is terrific. Rating—9

9. Reviewed by Laura Mandell Zaidman, University of South Carolina Sumter. lauraz@uscsumter.edu