Posted on 08/22/2020 3:04:39 PM PDT by Eleutheria5
A municipality in Japan celebrated the 80th anniversary of the rescue of Jews by a local diplomat with a bake sale.
The benefit, which began this week in Japans Gifu district, will continue until Sept. 10 and its proceeds will go toward commemorating Chiune Sugiharas actions in Japan, Lithuania and beyond, Kyodo News reported Thursday. The district had planned to hold a benefit concert but had to switch to an online sale of cupcakes because of social distancing measures connected to the coronavirus.
From July 18 to Aug. 28, 1940, Sugihara, an intelligence officer and consul serving in Lithuania, issued thousands of visas to Jewish refugees, many of them from Poland.
His visas, coupled with fictitious destination visas issued by his Dutch counterpart in Lithuania, Jan Zwartendijk, allowed thousands of Jews to flee the Nazis. Sugihara acted in defiance of orders from his superiors in Japan, which was an ally of Nazi Germany.
The town of Yaotsu in Gifu district, which many believe was Sugiharas birthplace, has a museum honoring his actions, as does the city of Kaunas in Lithuania, where he handed out the visas.
Both institutions are to benefit from the proceeds of the bake sale, in which sets of cupcakes featuring berries from Lithuania are to be sold for about $28 per basket, Kyodo reported.
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(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
An example of the Deep State actually doing something good. It is as if the Deep State often acts in opposition to the leadership.
That’s a heck of a complex title.
There was another example of where the Japs saved the lives of Jews during WW2. This one Shanghai, under Japanese occupation. Hitler went as far as sending his understudy, Himler, over to Japan to ‘help’ the Japanese terminate the 20,000 Jews who where holed up there after fleeing Europe. Japan told him to take a hike, and all of those Jews survived...but the Jews did leave China after the war - too much cultural difference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Jewish_Refugees_Museum
I worked with a guy who was there as a child. Parents and siblings were on a ship that left Genoa and no other country including the US would let them off. China did and the family spent the war in Shanghai. Not much fun but they survived.
Wonder what they would think of our covid fiasco. All are gone now including him.
Dr. Abraham Kotsuji was involved in that. They did put the Jews in a ghetto, but refused to ship them eastward. Later, Dr. Kotsuji converted to Judaism, the first and perhaps only Japanese to ever do so, and took the name Abraham. He wrote his autobio: From Tokyo to Jerusalem.
Refused to ship them westward, I mean.
Crumbs from the totalitarian table.
In the Chabad Chassidic community, there were several elderly men who spent the war in Shanghai. They nearly starved to death, but they were at least safe there from the Nazis. They’re known as the Shanghai Group. All gone now. I knew at least one of them.
During the war, China itself was divided. Was he with the Nationalists, or the Communists?
Incredible - had to suck being in Japanese-occupied China, but still...the best outcome, considering what you said - no one would otherwise take them.
Guessing that you may be familiar with this group.
An amazing story.
A Jewish Dynasty in a Changing China
For more than a century, the fortunes of the powerful Kadoorie family have been a barometer of Chinese openness to the world.
...The Kadoories built their first fortune in Shanghai between the world wars, when the city became a global crossroads. When the communists took over in 1949 and expelled foreigners, they lost almost everything, fleeing to British-ruled Hong Kong to make a new start. Over the next 25 years they grew richer than ever, amassing an $18 billion portfolio that includes China Light and Power, which provides electricity to 80% of Hong Kongs residents, and the luxury Peninsula hotel chain.
When the Peoples Republic began to open up in 1972, after President Nixons visit, one of the first calls the communist leadership made was to the Kadoories, seeking their help in building a nuclear power plant. The Kadoories, who remain British citizens, became one of the countrys biggest foreign investors, returning to Shanghai triumphantly to build a new Peninsula Hotel. Today they meet regularly with top Chinese leaders, including Xi Jinping.
It has been a steep ascent since Elly Kadoorie landed in Hong Kong at the age of 18. He had been recruited to work for a major trading firm owned by the Sassoons, another Jewish family that had come to China from Baghdad 35 years earlier, just after the Opium Wars. But Elly soon struck out on his own, steering clear of opium, one of the main commodities the Sassoons transported between India and China. Instead he invested in hotels, land and utilities, building the infrastructure for the growing city of Shanghai as it became the Paris of the East. In time he built the grandest mansion in the city43 rooms for just three peopleand entertained celebrities like Charles Lindbergh. The Kadoories hotels hosted the worlds elites, including the wedding of Chiang Kai-shek.
Most Westerners in China, including the Sassoons, fled to Europe, Australia or the Americas. But Ellys grown sons, Lawrence and Horace, stayed close by, moving to the familys hotel in Hong Kong. If we sit down and worry, not only will no progress be made but everything will get worse, Lawrence wrote to Horace in 1946. If we go ahead optimistically, and in the belief that Hong Kong has a great future before it we shall recover our losses and progress. Hong Kong, Lawrence declared, may become another Shanghai.
He turned out to be spectacularly correct...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-jewish-dynasty-in-a-changing-china-11590688537
also:
The Last Kings of Shanghai Review: Bund Traders
The story of old Shanghai and its Jewish tycoons. How did they amass such wealth? The answer depends on your politics.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-last-kings-of-shanghai-review-bund-traders-11592578746
A distant uncle of mine was part of a group in the American consular office in France that acted similarly in the late 1930s, up to 1940. If somebody came seeking to get to the United States, and it came out that they were Jewish...”say no more, here’s your visa, good luck.”
That took testicular fortitude. There were all sorts of bureaucratic roadblocks to seeking asylum in the US back then, which they had to disregard to do that. You needed a sponsor in the US, you needed a certificate from the local constabulary (Nazis, if from Germany) that you were a person of good character, there were quotas...
The Nationalists, they were the only legally recognized government, even by the USSR.
That must be why the Chicoms and the left do not lionize him. Mao-tze gooood. Chiang-kai baaaaad. Also why Lin-yu Tang is all but ignored, despite his many profound writings and insights.
The Shinto god Amaterasu omi kami surely smiles on him as does Jehovah.
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