The Archive · Summer 1940 · Kaunas, Lithuania
Chiune Sugihara and the visas: obey Tokyo, or write them?
What do you do?
The case
Told from where the person who decided stood. In the game each line is written into a drawing as you tap.
- You are Japan’s consul in Lithuania. The country has just been taken over, and your consulate will close within weeks.
- Every morning Jewish refugees stand at your gate. A Japanese transit visa is their one way out of Europe.
- You ask Tokyo. The answer comes back: a visa only for those with a final destination and money for the journey. Most have neither.
- You could write them anyway, by hand, one at a time. It would be against your instructions, and it could cost you your career.
The two calls
- Follow instructions.Visas only for the few who qualify. Most of the people at the gate get nothing.
- Write the visas.For everyone you can reach. Each visa is one family, and one more order disobeyed.
Make the call in the game Free. No account. Two minutes.
What happened
Chiune Sugihara wrote the visas, by hand, until the consulate closed.
More than 2,000, each one by hand. Tokyo warned him to stop while he was still writing.
After the war he was dismissed from the foreign service, and he believed this was why.
In 1984 Yad Vashem named him Righteous Among the Nations.
Source: Yad Vashem, “Visas to Japan: Chiune Sempo Sugihara”. www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/sugihara
How to read this
History is not an answer key. This page says what was done and what came of it. Whether it was right is the question the case leaves with you.
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