Japanese Prime Minister Visits U.S. Holocaust Museum
Japan’s prime minister at a visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington honored the Japanese envoy who helped thousands of Jews escape the Holocaust.
Shinzo Abe, who met with President Barack Obama on Tuesday, said while at the Holocaust museum on Monday, “As a Japanese citizen, I feel extremely proud of [Chiune] Sugihara’s work.”
As Japan’s imperial consul in Lithuania, Sugihara defied orders from his superiors in order to issue at least 2,000 visas to Jews between 1939 and 1940.
During his visit, Abe and his wife each lit a commemorative candle in the Hall of Remembrance and met with three survivors who had been helped by Sugihara.
In January, Abe visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO