📍Sugihara House, Vaižganto gatvė 30, 44229 Kaunas, Lithuania
1939 – 1940“I grew up in Japan and defied my father, who wanted me to become a doctor; I deliberately failed the entrance exam and studied English instead. I joined the foreign ministry, learned Russian, and served in Manchuria, where I saw how cruelly people could be treated. In November 1939 I was sent to Kaunas, then the capital of Lithuania, to open a small consulate. My wife, Yukiko, our sons and I lived and worked in a modest 1920s house at Vaižganto Street 30, on a hill above the city. In the summer of 1940 the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania, and Jewish refugees from Poland and Lithuania were desperate to escape. One morning in late July I looked out to see a large crowd gathered at the gates of our house. They asked for transit visas through Japan, the only route still open to them. I cabled Tokyo three times for permission and was refused each time. After talking with Yukiko, I decided that I must follow my conscience rather than my orders. For weeks I wrote visas by hand, up to eighteen hours a day, while Yukiko massaged my aching arm and our baby son, born in Kaunas that spring, slept nearby. Even as our train pulled out of Kaunas station in September, I was still writing visas and passing them through the window. Around six thousand people may have been saved. After the war I left the diplomatic service and lived quietly, but in 1985 Israel honoured me as Righteous Among the Nations. Our house in Kaunas is now the Sugihara House museum, where visitors can stand by the gate and the desk where those visas were written.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today