Righteous and Courageous

This is the true story of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania who risked his life and career to save thousands of Jews from certain death at the hands of the Nazis during the World War II. After the Germans invaded and conquered Poland, tens of thousands of Polish Jews fled to Lithuania to escape the horrors of the Holocaust. Now, the Germans were on the border of Lithuania and Sugihara had no doubt that soon the Germans would attack this small Baltic country. Jews rushed from consulate to consulate-no one, including America, would issue them visas. Working day and night, Sugihara issued, against his government's orders, thousands of visas and convinced the Soviets to permit these Jews to travel across Russia to Japan. A titanic struggle ensued between the pro-American and pro-German factions of the Japanese Foreign Ministry and military. The story examines the conflicted thinking of the Japanese officials, torn between pleasing their German ally by not admitting Jews into Japan and their gratefulness to the Jews for saving Japan in the Russo-Japanese war. The book delves into this little-known but exciting history that resulted in protection of the Jews by the Japanese against the Germans.