Hill of Humanity
Yaotsu, Gifu · 1994
In Sugihara's birthplace: a hilltop park and stone monument above the town, beside the Chiune Sugihara Memorial Hall.
Open in Maps ↗Museums & Organizations
1071 Yaotsu, Yaotsu-chō, Kamo-gun, Gifu 505-0301, JapanMap ↗
In Sugihara's birthplace, beside the Hill of Humanity park — a re-creation of his Kaunas consulate office and the story of his life.
Visit ↗
Vaižganto g. 30, Kaunas 44229, LithuaniaMap ↗
The villa that housed the Japanese consulate in 1940, where the visas were written — now a museum run by the Sugihara Foundation.
Visit ↗
23-1 Kanegasaki-chō, Tsuruga, Fukui 914-0072, JapanMap ↗
At the port where the refugees stepped off the ship from Vladivostok — telling the story of their arrival in Japan.
Visit ↗
A non-profit dedicated to sharing Sugihara's humanitarian act with the world.
Visit ↗
Har HaZikaron, Jerusalem 9103401, IsraelMap ↗
The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, which named Sugihara Righteous Among the Nations in 1985.
Visit ↗
100 Raoul Wallenberg Place SW, Washington, DC 20024, USAMap ↗
Holds photographs, testimonies and documents of the Sugihara escape among its collections.
Visit ↗4588 Bathurst Street, North York, Toronto, ON M2R 1W6, CanadaMap ↗
Opened in 2023; among its artifacts is a rare surviving Sugihara transit visa — issued to Daniel Zultek (register No. 623), who reached British Columbia.
Visit ↗Maedadoro Shirokane Building 4F, 5-22-12 Shirokanedai, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0071, Japan (office address)Map ↗
A foundation devoted to preserving and passing on Chiune Sugihara's story, through lectures, events, and volunteer work.
Visit ↗Free guided walking tours retracing the refugees' Kobe — Sannomiya, the community offices, the residences, and the port they sailed from — led by descendants of the Japanese Christians who cared for them in 1940–41. English or Japanese; two weeks' notice.
Visit ↗Memorials & Monuments
Statues, monuments and parks in public space that honour the visas for life — the places where Sugihara and Zwartendijk are remembered, distinct from the museums above.
Japan
Sempo Sugihara Memorial
Nagoya, Aichi
The “Sugihara Chiune Plaza” at his old school — life-size bronze statues of Sugihara and a Jewish family, and reproductions of the visas on ceramic plates.
Open in Maps ↗Sugihara & Yukiko monument
Numazu, Shizuoka
A monument honouring Consul Sugihara and his wife Yukiko for the “visas of life” — one of the few that names Yukiko alongside him.
Open in Maps ↗Lithuania
“Year of Sugihara” monument
Kaunas · 2020
Set on Laisvės alėja by Kaunas City for Lithuania's 2020 “Year of Sugihara,” near the hotel where he issued visas after the consulate closed.
Open in Maps ↗Memorial plaque, Hotel Metropolis
Kaunas
On the hotel where Sugihara lived, and where he went on writing visas after the consulate was ordered shut — the last of them handed out as he left the city.
Open in Maps ↗Zwartendijk memorial
Kaunas · 2018
A light sculpture near the old Philips office: a column of some 2,000 LED rods, one for each Curaçao endorsement Jan Zwartendijk wrote, by designer Giny Vos. Unveiled in June 2018 by the King of the Netherlands and the President of Lithuania, with Zwartendijk's son Rob present.
Open in Maps ↗Israel
Sugihara grove (uprooted)
Beit Shemesh
A grove planted by the Jewish National Fund (KKL) in Sugihara's honour — later found uprooted, a residential neighbourhood built over it. His son Nobuki Sugihara came to Israel over its loss, and attorney David Shor, himself the son of a visa recipient, took up the family's case. A memorial that no longer stands.
Open in Maps ↗China
Jewish Refugees memorial park
Hongkou, Shanghai
A park beside the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, honouring the ~20,000 refugees who sheltered in the ghetto — the last stop for many on the route.
Open in Maps ↗United States
Chiune Sugihara Memorial
Little Tokyo, Los Angeles · 2002
A statue of Sugihara in LA's Little Tokyo, at 192 S Central Avenue, kept by the Japanese-American community that carries his story forward.
Open in Maps ↗Books · English
Ratings are what the public gave these works, read on 29 July 2026: Goodreads out of 5, IMDb out of 10 (from IMDb's own published ratings file), Rotten Tomatoes as critic and audience percentages. The number each score rests on is shown beside it — several of these books are rated by a handful of readers, which tells you almost nothing. Works nobody has rated carry no score rather than a zero. Each book links to a search for its ISBN on Amazon and eBay — a search, not a listing, so it cannot go dead or drift onto another edition, and it shows second-hand copies, which for the out-of-print titles here is the only market there is. The archive takes no commission on any of it.
Visas for Life
Yukiko Sugihara (trans. Hiroki Sugihara)
Memoir
Jan Brokken (trans. David McKay), 2021
History · Zwartendijk
Masaaki Shiraishi (trans. Gaynor Sekimori), 2021
Biography
Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, 1998
Scholarly · out of print
Akira Kitade, 2021
History
The Path to Freedom: Japanese Help for Jewish Refugees
Akira Ito
The Path to Freedom: Japanese Help for Jewish Refugees
Akira Ito, 2002
History · Japan Travel Bureau
The Miracle Visas: Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara and the Story of the 6,000 Jews
Yutaka Taniuchi, 2001
History
The Story of Chiune Sugihara
Ann Hoekstra · in association with Sugihara House
Children's · picture book
Nachman Seltzer, 2015
History · Mir Yeshiva
Yecheskel Leitner, 1987
History · out of print
Alison Leslie Gold, 2000
Young adult
The Fugu Plan: The Untold Story of the Japanese and the Jews During World War II
Marvin Tokayer & Mary Swartz, 1979
History
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2001
Exhibition book · out of print
Ken Mochizuki & Dom Lee, 1997
Children's
Light One Candle: A Survivor's Tale from Lithuania to Jerusalem
Solly Ganor, 1995
Memoir
Righteous and Courageous: How a Japanese Diplomat Saved Thousands of Jews in Lithuania
Carl L. Steinhouse
History
Sylvia Smoller (Wassertheil-Smoller), 2018
Novel · a long Sugihara section
Leo Melamed: Escape to the Futures
Leo Melamed with Bob Tamarkin, 1996
Memoir · survivor
Night Journey: A Story of Survival and Deliverance
John G. Stoessinger
Night Journey: A Story of Survival and Deliverance
John G. Stoessinger, 1978
Memoir · survivor
From Holocaust to Harvard: A Story of Escape, Forgiveness, and Freedom
John G. Stoessinger
From Holocaust to Harvard: A Story of Escape, Forgiveness, and Freedom
John G. Stoessinger, 2014
Memoir · survivor
Why Nations Go to War
John G. Stoessinger
Why Nations Go to War
John G. Stoessinger, 1974
International relations · by a survivor
Visas of Life and the Epic Journey: How the Sugihara Survivors Reached Japan
Akira Kitade, 2014
History · the Amakusa-maru
To Wear the Dust of War: From Bialystok to Shanghai to the Promised Land — An Oral History
Samuel Iwry (ed. L. J. H. Kelley), 2004
Oral history
I Have My Mother's Eyes: A Holocaust Memoir Across Generations
Barbara Ruth Bluman, 2009
Memoir
Kotsuji's Gift: The Daring Rescue of Japan's Jewish Refugees
Jundai Yamada
History · Kotsuji
From Tokyo to Jerusalem
Abraham (Setsuzo) Kotsuji
From Tokyo to Jerusalem
Abraham (Setsuzo) Kotsuji, 1964
Memoir · the “Japanese Abraham”
Seishiro Sugihara (trans. Norman Hu), 2001
Scholarly
Under the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Japan and the Jews During the Holocaust Era
Meron Medzini, 2016
Scholarly
Japanese, Nazis & Jews: The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai, 1938–1945
David Kranzler, 1976
History · Shanghai
Shanghai Refuge: A Memoir of the World War II Jewish Ghetto
Ernest G. Heppner, 1993
Memoir · Shanghai
Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai
Marcia Reynders Ristaino, 2001
History · Shanghai
Shanghai Sanctuary: Chinese and Japanese Policy toward European Jewish Refugees
Gao Bei, 2013
Scholarly · Shanghai
Jewish Refugees in Shanghai 1933–1947: A Selection of Documents
Irene Eber
Irene Eber, 2018
Primary source · Shanghai documents
Pepper, Silk & Ivory: Amazing Stories about Jews and the Far East
Marvin Tokayer & Ellen Rodman, 2014
History · Far East
Great Rescues of World War II: Stories of Adventure, Daring and Sacrifice
Thomas J. Craughwell
History · rescues
Puppe's Story: A Child's Remembrance of His Father's Rescue
Hiroki Sugihara & Anne Hoshiko Akabori
Children's
Chiune Sugihara: Konsul, który ratował Żydów
Aleksander B. Skotnicki
Biography · Polish
Dr. Chaskel Wyszkowski
Memoir · Vilna–Japan–Shanghai
Rabbi E. Y. Hertzman & Rabbi C. U. Lipschitz
History · Mir Yeshiva
Escape to Shanghai: A Jewish Community in China
James R. Ross, 1994
History · Shanghai
Books · 日本語 (Japanese)
太平洋を渡った杉原ビザ (The Sugihara Visa, Across the Pacific)
バンクーバー新報企画編 (Vancouver Shinpo)
証言集 · Survivor testimonies
Buy Amazon Japan
学習まんが人物館 杉原千畝 (Sugihara Chiune, manga biography)
渡辺勝正 監修 · あべさより 漫画 (Shogakukan)
まんが · Children's manga
Buy Amazon Japan
Yakusoku no Kuni e no Nagai Tabi (A Long Journey to the Promised Land)
Shino Teruhisa, 1988
記録 · the first Japanese volume on the story
Buy Amazon Japan
Ketsudan: Inochi no Biza (A Decision — Visas to Save Lives)
Watanabe Katsumasa, 1996
伝記 · Biography
Buy Amazon Japan
Shinso Sugihara Biza (The Truth — Sugihara's Visas)
Watanabe Katsumasa
Shinso Sugihara Biza (The Truth — Sugihara's Visas)
Watanabe Katsumasa
研究 · History
Buy Amazon Japan
Sugihara Chiune: Rokusen-nin no Inochi o Sukutta Gaikokan (The Diplomat Who Saved 6,000)
Watanabe Katsumasa
Sugihara Chiune: Rokusen-nin no Inochi o Sukutta Gaikokan (The Diplomat Who Saved 6,000)
Watanabe Katsumasa
伝記 · Biography
Buy Amazon Japan
命のビザ・杉原千畝 (Inochi no Biza: Sugihara Chiune, children's biography)
石崎洋司 文 · 山下和美 絵 (Kodansha · Hi-no-Tori series)
児童書 · Children's
Buy Amazon Japan
NHK にんげん日本史 杉原千畝 (NHK Ningen Nihonshi: Sugihara Chiune)
小西聖一 著 · 酒寄雅志 監修 (Rironsha)
児童書 · Children's
Buy Amazon Japan
杉原千畝 命のビザ、六千の決断 (Sugihara Chiune: Visas of Life, the Decision of 6,000)
坂田昌明 Sakata Masaaki
実話 · popular history
Buy Amazon Japan
戦場の外交官 杉原千畝 (Sugihara Chiune: Diplomat on the Battlefield)
櫻田啓 Sakurada Kei (PHP文庫)
伝記 · Biography
Buy Amazon Japan
Films & Documentaries
Ratings are what the public gave these works, read on 29 July 2026: Goodreads out of 5, IMDb out of 10 (from IMDb's own published ratings file), Rotten Tomatoes as critic and audience percentages. The number each score rests on is shown beside it — several of these books are rated by a handful of readers, which tells you almost nothing. Works nobody has rated carry no score rather than a zero.
dir. Robert Kirk & Diane Estelle Vicari, 2000
Documentary · PBS
dir. Dana Janklowicz-Mann & Amir Mann, 2002
Documentary
dir. Junichi Kajioka, 2017
Documentary
dir. Michael W. King, 2011
Documentary · twelve diplomats
Message for Chiune Sugihara
dir. Aya Takahashi
dir. Aya Takahashi, 2012
Documentary · three parts · the Vancouver families
Zerach — A Refugee and Remnant in the Holocaust
dir. Adir Zik
dir. Adir Zik, 1996
Documentary · Zerach Warhaftig's rescue voyage
Talks & Discussions
- Sugihara Survivors — film discussionTalk · YouTube
- The Kobe Passage: Jewish Refugees in Japan and the Holocaust's Most Surprising Escape — Dr. Tracy Slater · JDC Archives Fellowship, 2026Lecture · JDC Archives
Testimonies · In Their Own Words
Firsthand oral histories from the USHMM “Flight and Rescue” collection (1999) — survivors of the Lithuania → Japan → Shanghai escape, many of them people in this register.
- George Bluman · The story of a family saved by Sugihara — YouTubeson of Nathan Bluman (register No. 1569) · the mathematician whose numbered Sugihara list this archive uses
- Moshe Zupnik — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999register No. 1225 · stamped ~2,000 visas beside Gudze
- Zorach Warhaftig — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999register No. 455 · the Mizrachi leader who organised the escape
- Jan Zwartendijk (the consul's son) — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999burned the only list of Curaçao recipients
- Leo Hanin — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999JEWCOM Kobe · the relief organiser
- Meri Nowogrodzki — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999the Nowogrodzki family, register No. 1506
- Marko Nowogrodzki — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999register No. 1506
- Norbert Swislocki — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999register Nos. 61–62 (Swislocki)
- Hanni Vogelweid (née Sondheimer) — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999register No. 1320 · visa 6 Aug 1940
- Victor Erlich — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999register No. 1684 · son of Bundist Henryk Erlich
- Alexander Schenker — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999the Schenker family, register Nos. 476–477
- Susan Bluman — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999register · with husband Nathan Bluman
- Ruth Segal (née Berkowitz) — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999register · her father's Kaunas visa
- Leo Melamed — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999later chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange
- Lucille Camhi — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999the “last visa of the day,” 12 Aug 1940
- Yonia Fain — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999painter who forged his own Curaçao visa
- Benjamin Gelbfish — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999Chachmei Lublin yeshiva · Curaçao + Sugihara
- Motl (Max) Goldberg — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999got his visa at the Vladivostok consulate
- Ernest Heppner — USHMM oral historyShanghai (no-visa sea route) · describes the Shanghai ghetto and its Japanese overseer
- Jechil Dobekirer — USHMM · Flight and Rescue, 1999Flight and Rescue collection
Articles & Archives
A reader's compass for Shanghai sources: two distinct refugee populations shared that city, and most archives mix them. Some 18,000 German and Austrian Jews sailed directly to Shanghai in 1938–39 — no visa was needed to land there — after Kristallnacht closed every other door. The Sugihara register's people came the other way and later: Polish and Lithuanian Jews crossing the Soviet Union by rail in 1940–41 on the Curaçao fiction and Sugihara's transit visas, reaching Kobe first, with roughly a thousand transferred on to Shanghai before Pearl Harbor. A Shanghai memoir, certificate or route that begins with a German city and a 1938–39 sailing is almost never a register family — but the two communities lived the ghetto years side by side, so their records constantly touch.
- Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara — USHMM Holocaust EncyclopediaEncyclopedia
- Polish Jewish Refugees in Lithuania: Unexpected Rescue, 1940–1941 — USHMM Holocaust EncyclopediaEncyclopedia
- Chiune Sempo Sugihara, the Righteous Among the Nations — Yad VashemProfile
- The Sugihara List (Survivors and Victims Database) — USHMMPrimary source
- A reproduction of Sugihara's original visa list (PDF) — Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido UniversityPrimary source · the list
- The Chiune Sugihara Lists — numbered and alphabetized, with survivor detail — George Bluman (with Akira Kitade) · University of British Columbia, 2025Primary source · the list, enriched
- Chiune Sugihara in his own words (Fuji TV interview, Moscow, 1977) — Yad Vashem · courtesy Port of Humanity Museum, Tsuruga, 1977Primary source · interview
- Chiune Sugihara and the Jewish Refugees: 91 documents from the Moscow, Tokyo, Lithuanian and Israeli archives — Ilya Altman · Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University, 2022Primary source · archives
- Visa Investigation Records of the Shanghai Diaspora Communities, 1946–1951 — U.S. National Archives · RG 84, U.S. Consulate General ShanghaiPrimary source · ~1,300 case files with photographs, affidavits and biographies of Shanghai refugees applying for American visas after the war — the very process the archive's stay-behind families (the Walkins, the Krawiec household) went through in 1946; 113 files digitized, the rest at College Park
- When a Certificate Was Not Only a Piece of Paper — marriage certificates from the Shanghai ghetto — Jewish Museum BerlinEssay · life records of the Shanghai refuge
- The Holocaust Refugee Map — journey routes, including Kobe and Shanghai — The Wiener Holocaust LibraryPrimary source · mapped refugee routes; mostly the German 1938–39 wave, with rare Kobe stay-behinds such as Antonia Jacoby, who remained in Kobe until 1947
- From Vilnius to Vladivostok Through the Needle's Eye — Leah Zell · Liberties Journal, 2026Memoir · register Nos. 789–790
- This Heroic Japanese Diplomat Defied His Government to Save Thousands — Smithsonian MagazineFeature
- The Unsung Dutch Hero Behind Sugihara's Rescue of Jews — Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 2018Feature · Zwartendijk
- Dutch Diplomat Was Punished for Saving Jews, New Book Reveals — The Times of Israel, 2020Feature · Zwartendijk
- Sugihara Chiune and the Visas to Save Lives: Assessing the Efforts to Memorialize a Japanese Hero — Eldad Nakar · The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 2008Scholarly
- The Mirrer Yeshiva's Escape From Europe — Chaim Shapiro · Jewish World Review, 1998First-hand account · Mir Yeshiva
- Remembering Sugihara, Re-framing Japan in Europe: Holocaust Era Altruism and the Politics of Cultural Memory — Jane Marie Law · Acta Orientalia Vilnensia, 2006Scholarly · memory politics
- The Mir Yeshiva's Holocaust Experience: Ultra-Orthodox Perspectives on Japanese Wartime Attitudes towards Jewish Refugees — Rotem Kowner · Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2022Scholarly · Mir Yeshiva
- The Forgers of Sugihara Visas — Martyna Rusiniak-Karwat · Kwartalnik Historii Żydów / Jewish History Quarterly, 2023Scholarly · forged visas
- The Issuance of Visas to War Refugees by Chiune Sugihara as Reflected in the Documents of Russian Archives — Ilya Altman · Darbai ir dienos / Deeds and Days, 2017Scholarly · Russian archives
- Consul Sugihara Chiune and the Polish Jews in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1939–1940 — Olga Barbasiewicz · Sprawy Narodowościowe / Nationalities Affairs, 2010Scholarly · in Polish
- Refugees, Visas, Rescuers? Kaunas 1939–1940 — Simonas Strelcovas · Darbai ir dienos / Deeds and Days, 2007Scholarly · in Lithuanian
- Kobe: A Japanese Haven for Jewish Refugees, 1940–1941 — Pamela Shatzkes · Japan Forum 3:2, 1991Scholarly · Kobe
- Polish-Japanese Co-operation during World War II — Ewa Pałasz-Rutkowska & Andrzej T. Romer · Japan Forum 7:2, 1995Scholarly · Romer & the Kobe aid network
- Japanese Policy Toward the Jews, 1938–1941 — David Kranzler · The Japan Interpreter XI:4, 1977Scholarly · Japanese policy
- Conditions and Reasons for the Granting of Soviet Transit Visas to Refugees from Poland — Dina Porat · Shvut 6 — in Hebrew, 1979Scholarly · Soviet transit visas
- We Refugees Archive: Vilna, 1939–1941 — refugee testimonies & the Weyland–Sugihara escape — Minor Kontor / bpb · digital archiveDigital archive · Vilna testimonies
- From Poland to Shanghai: The Story of the Mir Yeshiva's Survival of World War II — Eric Shaffer · The Jewish Community of ChinaHistory · Mir Yeshiva
- An Evacuation of Jews, With Help From Japan — James Barron · The New York Times, 2014Report
- Songs of Sugihara's Survivors — Karen Leon · Tablet Magazine, 2023Essay · a survivor's daughter, and the Carnegie Hall tribute
- The Japanese Hero Who Saved My Grandfather From the Nazis — Dovid Greenwald · Chabad.org, 2024Essay · a grandson of register No. 1840 (Nochum Preger)
- Who Is the Greatest Japanese Person Ever? — Matthew Hernon · Tokyo Weekender, 2017Readers' poll · Sugihara ranked No. 1
- Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness — companion site — PBS / WGBHResources
- Duty and Humanity: New English Book Sheds Light on Sugihara's Life — Nippon.com, 2021Feature
With thanks to
Every document in this archive belongs to someone else. These are the museums, collections, archives, dealers and — above all — families whose material makes the register possible. Counts are of documents drawn from each, and grow as the archive does.
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Collections467 documents
- ourpassports.com68 documents
- Bidspirit auction archive34 documents
- passport-collector.com (Tom Topol)26 documents
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia23 documents
- Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York21 documents
- Sugihara Survivors & Descendants (Facebook group)20 documents
- Yad Vashem, Jerusalem19 documents
- Invaluable auction archive10 documents
- Kobe Jewish Community (KJRST)7 documents
- Wikimedia Commons7 documents
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum6 documents
- Kenyon College — Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection5 documents
- Remember.org5 documents
- Spungen Foundation / Sugihara Memorial Hall, Yaotsu5 documents
- Kedem Auction House, Jerusalem4 documents
- Mishpacha Magazine4 documents
- (Hi)stories of the German-Jewish Diaspora2 documents
- Gedenkstätte Stille Helden (Silent Heroes Memorial), Berlin2 documents
- Reddit r/translator (family archive)2 documents
- Tablet Magazine2 documents
- The Times of Israel2 documents
- Zchor.org2 documents
- Chabad.org1 document
- City of Kobe archives1 document
- Melbourne Holocaust Museum1 document
- Ritoja.lt (personal archive)1 document
- Social Museum of the Jews of Białystok1 document
- WarRelics.eu forum archive1 document
- Families and private collections685 documents