A documentary film about Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul to Lithuania during World War II who issued more than 2,000 visas to Jews fleeing Poland, was screened at the Simon Wiesenthal Center during Holocaust Remembrance Week.
"Sugihara Conspiracy of Kindness" was completed in July 1999 and was first shown on April 3 at the United Nations in New York. The film was part of an exhibition honoring diplomats who rescued Jews and other refugees between 1938 and 1945.
By issuing the 10,000 transit visas, at great personal risk, Sugihara is said to have saved 6,000 people. Today, it is estimated that 40,000 people owe their existence to him, including the descendants of the original survivors.
Of these who had fled to Lithuania from Poland, about 5,000 passed through Japan on their way to asylum in third countries.