'Schindler' Sugihara's goodwill led others to help Jews

Japan Policy & Politics, Feb 28, 2000

TOKYO, Feb. 23 Kyodo

One Japanese diplomat's goodwill greatly influenced many other people to help thousands of Jews to whom he provided visas escape persecution from Nazi Germany during World War II, a U.S. academic said Wednesday.

Hillel Levine said there was "something powerful" about the goodwill of the late Chiune Sugihara, known as "Japan's Schindler," that enabled him to help many Jews escape. Levine, professor of sociology and religion at Boston University, is known as a researcher on Sugihara and for his book "In Search of Sugihara."

As vice consul at the Japanese mission in Lithuania, Sugihara issued about 10,000 Japanese transit visas between July and August 1940 against Tokyo's instructions to enable Jews who had fled to Lithuania from Poland to pass through Japan. Of these, about 5,000 Jews passed through Japan on their way to asylum in other countries.

But Levine, who described the whole story in his book "In Search of Sugihara," said that Sugihara's issuing of visas was not the only factor that enabled these Jewish people to escape.

Levine, in a lecture at the Foreign Press Center in Tokyo, said it was the particular situation within the Japanese Foreign Ministry at the time that enabled Sugihara to continue issuing such visas.

He said that some ministry officials recognized the validity of visas issued by Sugihara even after the foreign minister ordered him to stop issuing them because there were factions in the ministry which wanted to win the favor of the United States and thought this would be one way of gaining American public support.

This was over a year before Japan attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in December 1941, sparking the U.S. declaration of war against Japan.

Levine said Sugihara had also somehow succeeded in persuading Russian officials to issue transit visas for these people to go to Japan via Russia, and that during their stay in Japan there were ordinary Japanese people who warmly accepted them and gave them food and necessities.

He called this chain of events a "conspiracy of goodness," in which, by showing goodwill, people can bring out the best in each other.

"Sugihara's incredible goodness and generosity just brought out the best in people," he said. "There was something powerful about this man and about his personality, so I think a conspiracy between good people can bring the best out of other people."

Levine related a story he heard during an interview with Sugihara's Russian wife, to whom he was married from 1924 to 1935 while working for the Foreign Ministry of Machuria, which was colonized by Japan.

According to the wife, who is now in an old people's home in Australia, when there was a flood in northern Manchuria Sugihara went to the disaster site and stayed there several weeks helping local residents with food and health care, while other Japanese officials merely wrote reports to Tokyo about the disaster.

After several years of research in Japanese and European archives, Levine published his book on Sugihara in 1996, and its Japanese version was published by Shimizushoin Ltd. two years later.

Sugihara has been dubbed by the media "Japan's Schindler" in reference to German businessman Oscar Schindler, whose life was depicted in the film "Schindler's List," because Sugihara, like Schindler, helped Jews under the Nazi administration.

Levine, however, opposes such a tag, saying that Sugihara "was a far better person than Schindler in a variety of ways."

Levine said Schindler came from Czechoslovakia and grew up with Jewish children. Nevertheless, he became a member of the Nazi party for opportunistic reasons and was ready to persecute Jews.

"He had a personal conversion which was fully in accordance with his character as a gambler...He saw this opportunity to save Jews. This was just a big gamble that he could undertake to outfox the Jews," he said. "He took tremendous risks and he saved 1,100 Jews."

Levine said he did not want to denigrate Schindler, but that his motives contrast with those of Sugihara.

"Sugihara had nothing positive about Jews, no identification with Jews...I don't think he had cared that they were Jews. He simply saw people who were in trouble and decide to help them," he said.

"He knew that he may be killed, and nevertheless he helped the Jews," he added.

Levine said that doing good was an affirmation of the "love of life" and that this is a lesson he has learned from Sugihara.