In the summer of 1940, Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat in Kovno, Lithuania, when Jewish refugees from Poland began crowding outside his consulate. Many of them held questionable visas to the Dutch island of Curacao, and they needed permission to pass through Japan to get out of Europe. With no clear instructions from Tokyo, Sugihara decided to help. He wrote transit visas for hundreds and hundreds of people, and before his consulate closed that fall he even gave visas to refugees who lacked proper travel papers. Tokyo sent a cable reminding him of the rules. He kept going. In 1984, Yad Vashem honored him as Righteous Among the Nations.
