"In the capital of Lithuania, desperate Jewish refugees faced annihilation in the Holocaust. That was when Zwartendijk-with the help of Chiune Sugihara, the consul for Japan-chose to break his country's diplomatic rules. Together, the two officials opened a route to freedom. Zwartendijk issued thousands of visas to the Dutch colony of Curaçao on the other side of the world, and Sugihara ensured a clear path, allowing refugees to travel on the Trans-Siberian Express all through Soviet Russia to Vladivostok, further to Japan, and onwards to China. Many of these Jewish refugees survived, but Zwartendijk and Sugihara were both shunned by their own countries after the war, their courageous actions left unheralded"--
