At the end of 1939, the Germans occupied western Poland, and the USSR its eastern part. By May 1940, no fewer than 10,000 Jews had fled from the territories of Poland occupied by Germany and Russia to neutral Lithuania. On June 15, large Soviet military formations entered all three Baltic states. On June 21, these countries "requested" the USSR for official annexation. On August 3, the request was fulfilled. As a result, tens of thousands of refugees found themselves caught between Hitler’s Gestapo and the Soviet NKVD. It was extremely difficult to get to Palestine, as the British authorities severely restricted immigration. Britain and America also practically did not accept Jewish refugees (and it was not easy to leave the Soviet Union, of which Lithuania was now a part).

Polish Jewish refugees who found themselves in Lithuania, mostly in Vilnius, desperately sought ways to escape the still vague threat of the Nazis. Most consulates in the Lithuanian capital Kaunas were already closed. Time was running out. But the Dutch consulate was still operating.

Jan Zwartendijk arrived in Kaunas from the Netherlands at the end of 1938 as the manager of the large Dutch company "Philips," which produced electrical appliances, mainly radios. His wife Erna and two children, Edith and Jan (the author of these lines), joined him in May 1939. The third child, Robert, was born in Kaunas in September 1939.

On May 10, 1939, Germany invaded the Netherlands. The Dutch ambassador to the Baltic countries, de Dekker—whose residence was in Latvia, Riga—immediately dismissed the then Dutch consul general in Lithuania due to the pro-Nazi views of his German wife. A couple of weeks later, Ambassador de Dekker asked Zwartendijk to perform, presumably minor, duties as the acting Dutch consul in Lithuania. Zwartendijk was officially appointed on June 14, one day before Soviet troops entered Lithuania.

The origin of the "visas to Curaçao," which are the "heroes" of this story, was recounted in the book "Remember the Days of the Past—Historical Essays" by Isaac Levin, one of those miraculously saved. At the end of June 1940, Pessla Levin, Isaac’s wife, asked Zwartendijk and de Dekker for help to leave Soviet Lithuania. Before her marriage in 1935 to a Polish citizen, Isaac, which made her a Polish citizen as well, she had been a Dutch citizen. Having moved from Poland to Vilnius (transferred by Soviet authorities to Lithuania at the end of 1939), Pessla Levin first asked Zwartendijk in Kaunas whether she, holding a Polish passport, could obtain a Dutch visa to the Dutch East Indies. Zwartendijk replied that it was impossible. To be sure, she wrote to Ambassador de Dekker, who politely confirmed that the issuance of such visas had been stopped. "My wife wrote again to Mr. de Dekker, asking if he could help her in any other way since she had previously been a Dutch citizen. The ambassador replied that he did not see how he could do so, as visas were not issued for the Dutch Caribbean territories. To enter, one had to obtain permission from the local authorities in Curaçao. My wife wrote again asking if he would agree not to mention the permission at all but simply write in her Polish passport that visas to Curaçao and Surinam were not required. She assured him she was not going there anyway. The ambassador replied: Send your passport. She did so, and a few days later the passport returned with a handwritten note from the ambassador in French: 'The Dutch Consulate in Kaunas hereby informs that an entry visa for non-citizens traveling to Surinam, Curaçao, and other Dutch possessions in the Americas is not required.' Date—July 11, 1940. This note became known as the 'visa to Curaçao.' Isaac continues: The passport was shown to Consul Zwartendijk, who, seeing what Ambassador de Dekker had done, simply copied the text (into my Lithuanian ID)." Date July 22, 1940.

Both these "visas to Curaçao" are shown in the book. His son Nathan, who was saved at age five with his parents, still keeps the originals. In fact, de Dekker issued only one "visa to Curaçao," the one dated July 11 for Pessla Levin. The visa issued by Zwartendijk on July 22 to Isaac Levin was, according to him, the first but far from the last. Of course, this note in the passport would have been useless if it mentioned the need to have permission to enter (the colony). But without it, it could pass as an indication of the final destination. This was exactly what was needed for the second step—to give Sugihara a legal reason to issue transit visas for passage through Japan to reach Curaçao, designated as the destination.

There is another episode of memories about the early stage of the appearance of the "visas to Curaçao" from Nathan Gutvirt. A Dutch citizen, he was a 23-year-old Yeshiva student in Telšiai, Lithuania, where he had lived since 1934. Gutvirt actually wanted to get to Curaçao because he dreamed of being somewhere near the USA. Being a Dutch citizen, he only needed a passport to enter the colonial possessions. Around mid-July, Gutvirt inquired about the possibility of obtaining a visa to Curaçao for some of his Polish and Lithuanian friends from the Yeshiva who wanted to leave the country for religious reasons. Gutvirt was told the same as the Levins—that non-Dutch citizens did not need visas, as the decision on who could enter the colonies was made by the local administration (a positive decision was quite rare). Gutvirt remembered that in the French document from de Dekker, which he saw with Zwartendijk, stating that a visa was not required, the need for permission to enter the colonies was mentioned. Zwartendijk agreed that he could omit this part, and Gutvirt’s friends would have a reason to request Japanese transit visas. Then Gutvirt decided to talk to Zerah Warhaftig, leader of the Jewish community in Vilnius (later Minister of Religious Affairs in Israel). Warhaftig advised him to ask Zwartendijk to put such a note in the passport for everyone who wanted it and also to affix a consular stamp to make it look more like a visa. Gutvirt did so, and Zwartendijk agreed. Warhaftig spread the news, and a chain reaction followed. Within a few hours, dozens of people gathered at Zwartendijk’s door. At first, being cautious, de Dekker and Zwartendijk intended to help only the Levins and a few of Gutvirt’s friends. But then Zwartendijk began helping everyone who wanted it. When he agreed to do so, he probably did not suspect that in the next four days (July 24–27) he would handwrite about 1,300 visas, and in the following five days (July 29 to August 2), using the consular stamp, issue at least another 1,050 visas. The highest known number from surviving visas is document No. 2345, issued to Eliazu Kupinski and his family.

Thus, at the initial stage, four people played the most important role: Mrs. Levin, who first found a way out; Ambassador de Dekker, who wrote the note requiring some imagination; Nathan Gutvirt, who cared about his non-Dutch friends; and Warhaftig, who spread this visa bluff among more people. Zwartendijk rose to the occasion, accepting the challenge of this dangerous undertaking. It seems he independently launched this eight-day flurry of work as a spontaneous reaction to the growing needs of people asking for help. He probably understood that he could prevent immense suffering for these people. These fictitious "visas to Curaçao" could open the path to salvation. As Gutvirt expressed in one interview, not hiding a note of deep satisfaction in his old voice: "It was all a scam." By that time, Zwartendijk’s "real" work at Philips no longer existed. A new Soviet government appeared, and banks were closed, leading to the winding down of all commercial activity. The goods from the company’s shop windows were liquidated. Instead, as in all the city’s windows, huge portraits of Stalin, Lenin, and Marx appeared against red banners. Around August 3, the Soviets "allowed" workers to occupy the company’s premises. Since Zwartendijk’s office at the company doubled as his consular office, this put an end to his activity as consul.

The issuance of Japanese transit visas implied that the recipient already had permission to travel to the final destination, which required a mandatory stop in Japan. A few days after the movement around the "visas to Curaçao" began on Gutvirt’s initiative, Sugihara started issuing Japanese transit visas, granting their holders the right to stay in Japan for no more than 10 days. The journey was supposed to be by train through Siberia to Vladivostok, then by sea to Japan. This required transit and exit permission from the Soviets.

Sugihara should not have had any reason to suspect the legality of the first "visa to Curaçao" provided to him as a basis for issuing Japanese transit visas.

On June 26, 1940, the Levins appeared in the office of Chiune Sugihara:

- Isaac Levin (Polish citizen, writer), and his son Nathan had a "visa to Curaçao," handwritten and signed by Dutch consul J. Zwartendijk

- Isaac’s wife Pessla (Polish citizen, former Dutch subject), who sported her own "visa to Curaçao," handwritten and signed by Dutch Ambassador de Dekker; her mother and brother were both Dutch citizens

Among all the refugees, there was no more convincing group to introduce Sugihara to the "visa to Curaçao" method: half of it consisted of Dutch citizens with similar handwritten notes from the ambassador and consul. The documents of this family surely looked the most impeccable to Sugihara, playing the role of a stereotype of the legality of the "visas to Curaçao."

The next day, July 27, a crowd gathered for the first time in front of the Japanese representation. All were Polish citizens, all had the same visas signed by Zwartendijk, and all knew about the Levins’ success, who had been there the day before.

Thus, Zwartendijk and Sugihara, previously strangers who had never met, found themselves in a situation where they had to act together in an unplanned, uncoordinated, and unofficial team, issuing visas at a rapid pace. Sugihara repeatedly called Zwartendijk and asked him to slow down. When on August 1 Zwartendijk issued the "visa to Curaçao" numbered 2200, Sugihara lagged behind, having issued about 700 Japanese transit visas, but he still remained in Kaunas throughout August and continued issuing transit visas. August 25 was the deadline for all remaining foreign representations to operate; after that, they were all closed.

The "visas to Curaçao," together with Japanese transit visas, became the salvation for 2,200 Jewish refugees, although it should be noted that none of them actually arrived in the Dutch colonies. About half received permission in 1941 to enter the USA, Palestine, and other countries from Japan. The rest were sent by the Japanese government during the war period by ship to Shanghai, where they were interned in a Jewish ghetto numbering about 18,000–20,000 people. The exact number of "visas to Curaçao" and Japanese transit visas issued by Zwartendijk and Sugihara is unknown. Available documents allow the assumption that there were at least 2,200. This roughly matches the official number of Jews who arrived in Japan with such visas (sources of this information include Rabbi Marvin Tokayer, long-time chief rabbi of the Jewish community in Japan; Tadeusz Romer, Polish ambassador to Japan in 1941; historian David Kranzler). This may be a coincidence, as the statistics are complicated by certain circumstances. A single visa could serve an entire family. Also, some talented refugees copied visas in large numbers. Some were sent from Japan to people stuck in Lithuania for reuse. In early 1941, several "visas to Curaçao" were issued to people requesting them from Lithuania by the Dutch consulate general in Stockholm. The Dutch consul in Kobe (Japan), de Vocht, also issued 74 "visas to Curaçao" to refugees from Kaunas who somehow reached Japan by ship, having Japanese transit visas but no "visas to Curaçao." All passengers of the ship were supposed to turn back to Vladivostok, but de Vocht saved the situation by promising to issue the necessary "visas to Curaçao."

Finally, many refugees who received "visas to Curaçao" and Japanese transit visas did not dare to ask the Soviet authorities for permission to transit and exit the USSR, fearing being left in Siberia; undoubtedly, most of them perished at the hands of the Nazis.

All these circumstances confuse the understanding of the correlation between the visas and the fact of successful escape. But it so happened that the number of Jews who reached Japan correlates with the number of visas issued by the consulates—about 2,200.

Almost all who reached Japan were Polish Jews who fled to Lithuania. Baltic Jews could not leave the territory, as from August 3, 1940, they became new Soviet citizens. Expecting to help only a few Dutch citizens, Zwartendijk soon faced a dangerous choice. He was not a born hero, writes Brokken, but quickly decided to help the Jewish refugees who knocked on his door: they fled to Lithuania after the Nazi invasion of neighboring Poland in September 1939. During World War II, Lithuania underwent double occupation by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but for almost 10 months Kaunas was a free city.

Called the "northern Casablanca," it was a nest of spies and a refuge for refugees escaping both Nazis and Soviets. The situation changed when on June 15, 1940, the Red Army invaded Lithuania. Jewish refugees began desperately seeking a way out. When a couple of refugees came to him with an escape plan, Zwartendijk agreed to write in their passports that no visas were required for travel to the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao. Technically, this was true, but it did not specify that permission from the island’s governor was required. Zwartendijk hoped no one would check the entry requirements for the tiny island on the other side of the world. And no one did. This pseudo-visa opened the door to departure. Armed with the "visa to Curaçao," Jewish refugees could petition Sugihara, and managed to obtain Soviet consent for transit through their territory: the USSR desperately needed foreign currency, and railway tickets for refugees, for which "Intourist" charged exorbitant prices in dollars, became an important source of foreign exchange earnings.

Rumors about "Mr. Radio Philips" quickly spread among refugees. Although they lived less than 300 meters apart, Zwartendijk and Sugihara never met. But sometimes they spoke on the phone. Sugihara urged his Dutch colleague to slow down the visa issuance.

While Zwartendijk wrote his visa with a fountain pen and certified it with a green ink stamp, Sugihara wrote his with ink and brush. Both were exposed to enormous risk. Sugihara defied his bosses in Tokyo, while Zwartendijk would have been in mortal danger if the Nazis had learned about this when he returned to his occupied homeland. They also risked attracting the attention of the Soviet militia, which noticed long queues in front of the "Philips" office, which served as the Dutch consulate.

One evening, Zwartendijk was visited by a Soviet officer who ordered soldiers to block the sidewalk leading to the office. Accusing Zwartendijk of threatening public safety, he threatened to close the consulate immediately. The Dutchman offered him a "Philishave," a new electric razor introduced by the company in 1939. After a quick demonstration of the device, the officer declared it a miracle and allowed Zwartendijk to continue. When Zwartendijk returned to Nazi-occupied Netherlands in September 1940, the reasons for secrecy were obvious. Nevertheless, long after the war ended, when the scale of the Holocaust was well known, Zwartendijk was not honored.

By the way, he himself would never have spoken about this episode if he had not been asked at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1963. The ministry was unaware, and only an article in the Los Angeles "B’nai B’rith Bulletin," which mentioned the "Angel of Curaçao," attracted officials’ attention. But no one remembered his name. Some refugees thought his name was "Philips Radio."

In the end, in 1964, he even received a reprimand from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Brokken suggests that Zwartendijk’s heroism might have shamed his contemporaries. Zwartendijk was furious about the reprimand but was tormented by not knowing how many people escaped using his visas to Curaçao. In later years, when his health declined, he never stopped wondering what happened to the people who stood before him in that light-brown paneled office in Kaunas. His son thinks his father feared that no one got beyond Siberia.

"He must have thought that most of these people died. He must have worried that he sent them to their deaths." In 1976, researchers estimated that 95% of Jewish refugees with Zwartendijk’s papers survived the war. This news came to the Zwartendijk household the day after Jan’s funeral.

Of course, for Jewish refugees, the visa to Curaçao was not a simple pass to freedom but the beginning of a new painful odyssey. The Jewish Liver family, who received a visa, endured years of hardship, including forced labor making coffins in a Soviet camp for mother Chava and daughter Yadzia, and internment in the USA for father Avraham. When the Nazis invaded Poland, all three left their hometown Będzin, where Avraham owned a factory producing bicycle parts. After months of fleeing and frostbite on his foot, Avraham finally reached Kaunas. But his wife and daughter, who stayed in Lviv, were arrested by the NKVD and sent to a camp in the Urals. When Avraham Liver finally reached Vladivostok, he went daily for two months to the NKVD office to petition for their release. Incredibly, his efforts paid off: Chava and Yadzia were freed, and the family moved to Japan. After several more years of trials, they eventually settled in New York. For Liver-Stuip, who wrote the family history, Zwartendijk and Sugihara played a huge role in saving her grandmother, grandfather, and aunt. "It was easy to find information about Sugihara, but it was hard for me to learn about Zwartendijk. The injustice made me emotional, as I kept asking myself why one of them is so famous and the other practically unknown?" "There is room here for two heroes," she said. "To respect one and ignore the other is not a true story."

In the Kaunas Sugihara Museum, in a two-story mansion of the former Japanese consulate, an unprecedented document in world diplomacy is exhibited: the right half contains the explanation about the visa not being required to enter Curaçao, signed by Zwartendijk, and the left half—the Japanese transit visa signed by Sugihara. In the corner are stamps of the Lithuanian SSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Soviet NKVD (by then Lithuania had become a Soviet republic). In 1968, Sugihara was found by one of the Jews he saved, Israeli diplomat Joshua Nishri. In 1985, Sugihara was awarded the honorary title of Righteous Among the Nations. Due to health reasons, he could not attend the ceremony himself—the award was accepted by his wife and son. Sugihara and his family also received permanent Israeli citizenship. That same year, 45 years after those events, when asked about his motives for issuing visas to Jews, Sugihara named two reasons: first, refugees are people too, and second—they simply needed help. When asked if it was worth risking his career to save others, he quoted an ancient samurai saying: "Even a hunter will not kill a bird asking for protection." Sugihara died on July 31, 1986. Despite public recognition of his actions by Israel and other countries, he remained practically unknown in his homeland for a long time. Only at his funeral, attended by the Israeli ambassador to Japan and a large delegation of Jews from around the world, did neighbors learn about his feat. Currently, a permanent exhibition dedicated to Sugihara is located in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs archive in the Ikura district in central Tokyo.

On October 20, 1997, Yad Vashem awarded Zwartendijk the title of "Righteous Among the Nations" in honor of his activities in 1940 in Lithuania.

According to various estimates, the visas issued by Sugihara and Zwartendijk saved between 6,000 and 10,000 lives. But while Chiune Sugihara became one of the most famous Japanese and a national hero, Jan Zwartendijk’s name was known to only a few until recently. Jan Brokken’s book fills this gap.

One reason why little is known about his merits is that Zwartendijk was modest and did not consider his actions heroic, as he believed any decent person would have done the same. "The story of Zwartendijk has been unheard for too long. His work has been unnoticed for too long. Today, the goal is to correct this and properly honor Zwartendijk’s memory," said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the ceremony. "I am pleased to announce in the presence of his children, Edith and Rob, that His Majesty the King is pleased to award Zwartendijk the Gold Medal of Humanity."

The Dutch Prime Minister noted that Zwartendijk’s merits have received worthy recognition worldwide and also mentioned the light installation installed in Kaunas in 2018.

Sources:

Shkondini-Duyunovsky Aristakh Vladilenovich: How diplomats from Kaunas saved Jews

https://ru.wikibrief.org/wiki/Jan_Zwartendijk

https://www.lrt.lt/ru/novosti/17/2005803/v-muzee-sugikhary-otkryta-ekspozitsiia-o-spasitele-evreev-zvartendeike