His name is on the visa, but the escape from Kaunas was a relay — diplomats, refugees and aid workers who each held one link of the chain. These are the others.
Chiune Sugihara’s transit visa only worked because others made a destination, carried the loophole, kept the border open, and fed and moved thousands once they were through. The whole archive tells his story; this page credits the rest of the chain.
Director of the Philips works in Kaunas and, from May 1940, the Dutch honorary consul. In days he wrote some 2,345 Curaçao endorsements — the “visa to nowhere” that gave a refugee a destination to show Sugihara. He feared for the rest of his life that he had sent them to their deaths, and died in 1976 without learning that almost all had survived.
The Curaçao Loophole →The Dutch-born refugee whose persistence set the scheme in motion. In July 1940 she asked Ambassador de Decker to certify that Curaçao required no visa; he stamped it into her passport, Zwartendijk copied it for her family, and Sugihara issued their transit visas. Word spread from there to thousands. She was rescuee and rescuer both.
The Dutch ambassador in Riga who devised the wording — that no visa is required for Curaçao — quietly omitting that admission still lay with the colonial governor. He authorised it only for a handful of Dutch nationals; the thousands that followed were Zwartendijk’s own risk.
A refugee lawyer who grasped what the Curaçao formula could do and pressed it through the yeshivot, organising the escape from inside it. He reached Palestine, later helped draft Israel’s Declaration of Independence, and served as a government minister.
A Dutch student at the Telz yeshiva and among the first to obtain the Curaçao notation. He carried the loophole into the yeshiva world, where it became the escape route for hundreds of students and their teachers.
See his record →Sugihara’s assistant at the Kaunas consulate, who helped run the visa assembly line through its frantic final weeks.
A Mir yeshiva student who talked his way into helping stamp visas at the Japanese consulate, speeding the flow of papers to his fellow students.
The Japanese consul in Vladivostok — the last checkpoint before the ship to Japan. He let refugees board despite irregular or expired paperwork, keeping the route open at its final gate.
Poland’s ambassador to Japan, who met the refugees as they arrived and organised onward destination visas, funds and aid — the next link after Japan. Around two thousand reached safety through his efforts in Kobe.
A Japanese Hebrew scholar who interceded with the authorities to win the refugees crucial extensions of their stay in Japan. He was later detained and tortured for it; he converted to Judaism and is buried in Jerusalem.
No individual could feed and move thousands. The Kobe Jewish Community (Jewcom), the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and HICEM, and the Jewish community of Shanghai housed, funded and forwarded the refugees at every stage — much of it recorded in the telegrams now in this archive.
Accounts drawn from the sources gathered on the Resources page, including Jan Brokken’s The Just. Corrections and additions to this cast are welcome — please get in touch.