A second 'Japanese Schindler' uncovered: how a diplomat helped Jews fleeing Nazi Germany
A faded and creased document that was the difference between life and death for a family of Polish Jews fleeing Nazi Germany has been discovered in the United States, shedding new light on the role that a Japanese diplomat played in ushering refugees to safety in Japan and beyond.
Much is already known about Chiune Sugihara, who was stationed in Lithuania and defied Tokyo's orders to issue thousands of visas to Jews, later being dubbed the "Japanese Schindler", after the German industrialist Oskar Schindler who saved hundreds of Jews during World War II. But the latest discovery highlights how more government officials helped Jews fleeing persecution some eight decades ago.
"When it comes to visas issued to Jews, Sugihara is widely known but only now are we discovering that more Japanese diplomats also provided travel documents to refugees when they should not have," said researcher Akira Kitade.
"But very few people have heard of Saburo Nei," he added. "So this document is an extremely important find that helps us to piece the puzzle together a little better."
A visa issued by former diplomat Saburo Nei, dated February 28, 1941, and found in April 2020. Photo courtesy of Akira Kitade
Kitade specialises in the history of the Japan Travel Bureau, which was formed in 1912 as the forerunner of the travel firm JTB Corp., and discovered that a number of company employees also aided refugees trying to reach Japan.
Records in Moscow indicate that Nei, who was stationed at the Japanese consulate in Vladivostok in 1941, issued travel documents to Jews who had escaped from Eastern Europe by taking the Trans-Siberian Railway to the Pacific port city and were trying to reach a third nation. It was believed, however, that none of the visas had survived.
"A friend who is a Holocaust researcher in Philadelphia contacted me to say that someone had found a document and they were not sure what it was because it was written in Japanese," Kitade said. "As soon as I saw the name, I realised that this was a visa issued by Nei in Vladivostok " and I knew that it was a very important discovery."
The visa is dated February 28, 1941, and is for a Jewish refugee named Simon Korentajer, his wife and daughter. The family fled Poland after the German invasion in September 1939 and travelled to Lithuania and on to Moscow, shortly before Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
Another document discovered in the US shows that an appeal to the US embassy in Moscow for immigration visas was turned down, leaving the family with little option but to continue heading east in search of sanctuary.
A letter from the American Embassy in Moscow, turning down an application by Polish Jew Simon Korentajer. Photo courtesy of Akira Kitade
The policy of the Japanese government of the day was to refuse transit visas to anyone who did not have permission to travel on to a third country, with the US being the favoured destination for most refugees. The Korentajer family did not have papers to continue to another country, but Nei appears to have made a decision to issue the documents in any case.
The family left Vladivostok and arrived in the Japanese port of Tsuruga in March 1941. They later continued to the port of Kobe, where they secured paperwork that permitted them to go to Shanghai, where they remained for the rest of the war. The Korentajers eventually reached the US in August 1947, arriving by ship in San Francisco.
"We do not know how many visas Nei issued, but this one is listed as No. 21 so we can assume that at least 20 people before him were similarly granted permission to travel to Japan," Kitade said. "But it will probably remain a mystery just how many people he did save."
Nei, who was from a small town in Miyazaki Prefecture, never spoke of his actions after the war and remained in the foreign ministry for some years before switching to the Justice Ministry, where he finished his career as director of the immigration bureau in Nagoya. He died, aged 90, in 1992.
"It seems that he was a very modest man who did not talk about what he had done, but this discovery does also give me optimism that we can find more Japanese diplomats who similarly helped Jewish refugees," Kitade said.
Japanese researcher Akira Kitade holding the visa issued by diplomat Saburo Nei. Photo courtesy of Akira Kitade
Yakov Zinberg, a professor of East Asian studies at Tokyo's Kokushikan University, who has been aiding Kitade in his research, said the discovery is a "breakthrough" as very little is known about this period and the actions of these diplomats.
"There were probably several hundred Jews who had reached Vladivostok, some on visas issued by Sugihara and others without documents, but we will never know the exact figure," he said.
"Nei was told to deal with the situation and it is clear that the Soviets had no interest in these people staying in the Soviet Union and wanted them to go to Japan or elsewhere," he said. "Reports from the Soviet representative for foreign affairs that have been found in Moscow show that Nei said he 'felt sorry' for those people and so decided to issue them with visas to get to Japan."
Passport of Simon Korentajer, the recipient of the visa issued by Japanese diplomat Saburo Nei in Vladivostok.
Zinberg, who took US nationality in 1977 after escaping anti-Jewish sentiment in the Soviet Union, is optimistic that additional documents might emerge from dusty attics and provide even more background information on the activities of Japanese diplomats during this time.
"This discovery does give me hope, but the reality is that all these people are now gone so we have to deal with their descendants," he said. "It is unfortunate that we did not find this visa earlier, but I do expect this to provoke further interest in what was going on in Vladivostok because so little is known about what was happening there."
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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