House of Sugihara

Diplomats for Life

In 1940 thousands of Jews from Poland and Lithuania were desperate to get out, but they needed visas. The Dutch issued many visas for Curaçao and their Caribbean colonies, but getting there became much more difficult when Italy joined the Nazis and closed the Med. The main escape route was then across the USSR to the Pacific. In Kaunas the Japanese vice-consul Chiune Sugihara (1900-86) issued hundreds of Japanese transit visas, blithely disregarding orders to conduct all sorts of checks. He may have saved thousands of lives, as a whole family could travel on one visa; from Japan they moved on to North America and elsewhere. His mission ended when the embassy closed, Germany crushed Lithuania, and anyone who hadn't got out was exterminated. Sugihara spent his later years in obscurity in Japan; his Kaunas residence is now this museum.

• museum
• family

Address

Vaizganto g 30

Price

Adult €10, child or conc €5

Website

sugiharahouse.com (opens in a new tab)