Hello ,
I got off to a slow start in 2016, but I'm cranking up my engines to get through the mid-winter doldrums. Here's what I've got cooking for you. Don't miss these stories and more in my upcoming newsletters! - The fascinating, little-known story of how two brilliant female physicists’ groundbreaking
discoveries led to the creation of the atomic bomb.
- “Mercy Street,” the first PBS original drama in more than 10 years, drew 3.3 million viewers Sunday night. I'll tell you about the real civil war nurses this program is based on.
Did a Small Kindness Sire Heroic Compassion? |
It's 1939 Lithuania. A young boy wants to see the latest Laurel and Hardy movie, but he's given away his allowance to help Jewish refugees, thousands of them flooding in from Poland hoping to escape the Nazis.
Solly decides to
hit up his aunt for a loan, one Lithuanian coin for the movie. At his aunt's shop a stranger overhears Solly's request and spontaneously offers the boy two coins. On impulse, the boy invites the stranger to his family's first night of Chanukah celebration. That's how the Japanese Consul to Lithuania Chiune Sugihara came to attend Jewish Chanukah.
Sugihara noticed the affection between Solly's relatives and it reminded him of his own family, and of similar Japanese festivals. A
friendship grew between the Japanese man and the Russian Jewish boy and his father.
The following summer, Sugihara and his wife and children, woke one morning in mid-July to an enormous clamor outside. Peering out the window, they saw scores of people crowded up against the consulate fence. They were Jewish refugees desperate to flee the Nazis In little time, one hundred people grew to two hundred, and within days, thousands lined up in fear for their lives, believing their only path to freedom might be a Japanese transit visa, the ticket to a Soviet exit visa. They had few
options. Most of the free world refused to take in Jewish refugees from Poland or anywhere in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Three times Chiune Sugihara wired Tokyo for permission to issue the Jewish refugees visas. Three times he was denied. He discussed the situation with his wife and children. "I spent an entire night plunged in thought," he wrote later. A career diplomat, bound by the traditional obedience of the Japanese culture, Sugihara knew he risked disgrace, and he feared for the safety of his wife and children.
"I could have refused to issue them, but would that, in the end,
have truly been in Japan’s national interest? I came to the conclusion, after racking my brain, that the spirit of humane and charitable action takes precedence above all else," he wrote in is 1984 memoir. "“I am convinced to this day that I took that path of action faithfully, putting my job on the line, without fear or trepidation in my heart.” Sugihara and his wife Yukiko sat down and began to write visas.
For 29 days, from July 31 to August 28, 1940, they wrote and signed visas by hand, more than 300 a day. Yukiko made him sandwiches, when
Sugihara refused to stop for meals. Jewish refugees lined outside waiting and when some climb over the consulate fence, Sugihara paused to go out and promise he was doing all he could to help them.
"They were human beings and they needed help," he said later. "I'm glad I found the strength to make the decision to give it to them." Sugihara was a religious man and believed in a universal God of all people. He was fond of saying, "I may have to
disobey my government, but if I don't I would be disobeying God." At the end of August, Sugihara was sent to a new post. As his family boarded the train to Berlin, he continued issuing documents through the window, and as the train left the station, handed his consul visa stamp to a refugee to authenticate
more visas.
Sugihara is credited with saving some 6000 Jews from the Nazis.
As for Sugihara's young friend...most of Solly's family was murdered in the Holocaust. But Solly and his father survived in one of the outer camps of Dachau. Ironically, in May 1945, Solly was liberated by Japanese American soldiers of the 522nd Field Artillery
Battalion, men who had been interned in their own country.
And now, as Paul Harvey would say, you know the rest of the story.
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Are you fascinated by astronomy? If I could clone myself, go back to school and take up a totally new specialty, I'd be tempted to choose astronomy. Amid the staggering array of choices upon which to feast our eyes in this modern world, gazing with awe at the mystery of the night sky still
captures the imagination.
For the next few weeks, a fairly rare opportunity appears in the dawn sky. With the naked eye you can see five planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn appear in a line that stretches from high in the north to low in the east. For info on where and how to see them from your location, click here…. |
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