Ciune+Sugihara's+help+for+Jews

This picture is the visa that Ciune made for Jews to escape Holocast. Sugihara risked his career and his future to save six thousand Jews in the beginning of World War II. Sugihara gave Jews entry visas, which was against the order of the Japanese government. The German invasion of Poland filled Lithuania with Jewish refugees who were escaping from Hitler's advancing troops. In order for the fugitives to escape, Jews needed transit visas. Without these visas it was dangerous to travel, and it was impossible to find countries willing to issue them. On a summer morning in late July, 1940, consul Sugihara awakened to a crowd of Jewish refugees gathered outside the consulate. The refugees knew that their only path lay to the east and if Sugihara would grant them Japanese transit visas, they could obtain exit visas and race to possible freedom. Sugihara needed permission from the Japanese Foreign Ministry; otherwise, he had no authority to issue out hundreds of visas. But permission was denied three times by the Japanese government. Now Sugihara was faced with a difficult decision. He had to make a choice that would probably result in extreme financial hardship for his family in the future. Sugihara made a decision based on the hundreds of desperate Jews lined up outside the consulate. He disobeyed the Japanese government and forged documents to help the refugees to safety (Kelly). Sugihara and his wife wrote over three hundred visas a day, which would normally be done in one month by the consul. He did not even stop to eat because he chose not to lose a minute. People were standing in line in front of his consulate day and night for these visas. After getting their visas, the refugees lost no time in getting on trains that took them to Moscow, and then by trans-Siberian railroad to Vladivostok. They had escaped the death camps and the Holocaust all together.==