Jan Zwartendijk
Flight to Japan and China
Pessla Lewin, born in Amsterdam, became a naturalized Polish citizen through marriage to Issac Levin in 1940 and was stranded in Kaunas, Lithuania, when the Soviets annexed the country in July of that year. It seemed that there was no escape from persecution, but Pessla decided to apply to the Dutch Embassy of the Baltic States, whose headquarters were in Riga, Latvia. In July 1940, the Ambassador, Mr. L.P.J. de Decker, wrote in her passport, in French, “The Consulate of the Netherlands, Riga, hereby declares that for the admission into Surinam, Curaçao, and other possessions of the Netherlands in the Americas, no entry visa is required.” After his wife had successfully obtained this quasi-visa notation in her passport, Pessla’s husband, Dr. Isaac Lewin, approached the Dutch Consul, Jan Zwartendijk, in Kaunas, Lithuania, and asked him to write the same in his Leidimas (safe-conduct) papers which served as his identity card. He received this notation on July 22, 1940, and his was the first such “visa” issued in Kaunas. With this Curaçao “visa,” the Japanese consul, Chiune Sugihara, was prepared to stamp passports with the notation,“TRANSIT VISA”. In July 1940, Jan Zwartendijk had been asked to replace the Dutch Consul in Kaunas. Actually, Zwartendijk was not a professional diplomat at all. He was simply the representative of Philips in Lithuania, but he was a Dutchman and he was not a Nazi sympathizer. Having agreed to take on the position of Acting Dutch Consul, Zwartendijk could hardly have guessed what his short diplomatic career would have in store for him. After having granted Isaac Lewin the Curaçao “visa” that served as the key to the Japanese transit visa and a Soviet exit visa, two Dutch students at talmudic academies in Poland, Nathan Gutwirth and Chaim Nussbaum, who had also become fugitives in Lithuania, obtained the same “visa” from Zwartendijk and spread the word. In a matter of hours, hundreds of panic-stricken Jews lined up at the Dutch Consulate to obtain the same Curaçao-stamp from Zwartendijk. From July 23, 1940, until August 3, when the Soviets closed the embassies and consulates in Kaunas, Zwartendijk managed to issue pssibly as many as 2345 “visas” to Curaçao. The Japanese Consulate issued close to 2,000 transit visas and some of these were re-used when sent back to relatives from Japan. Altogether, between 2,100 and 2,200 Jewish refugees arrived in Japan with these visas, where they remained for three to eight months. None of the refugees arrived in Curaçao, but more than half went on to free countries, while about 1,000 were transported by the Japanese to Shanghai, in China, where they survived the war. Zwartendijk was forced to close down the Consulate in Kaunas on August 3, 1940. He spent the rest of the month trying to get back to the Netherlands, but, before that, he burned all official papers, removing any trace of the illegal transactions he had initiated on behalf of the Jews. He spent the rest of the war in Holland, working for Philips. He never told anyone about his wartime deeds. The Dutch government first became aware of his activities in 1963.
On October 6, 1997, Yad Vashem recognized Jan Zwartendijk as Righteous Among the Nations.
From: Yad Vashem/
Dutch government apologizes over diplomat punished for saving Jews in WWII
King of Netherlands, minister speak to family of Jan Zwartendijk, who was reprimanded after issuing unauthorized visas to more than 2,000 Jews 18 October 2018
The Dutch Foreign Ministry has apologized to the family of a diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, but was punished after the Second World War for his actions because they involved issuing unauthorized visas.
In a written response to parliament, Dutch Foreign Minister Stef Blok said efforts had been made to make amends for the treatment of Jan Zwartendijk, who was honorary consul of the Netherlands, in what today is Lithuania, during the war years, the Nederlandse Omroep Stichting TV channel reported Thursday.
After the war the Dutch Foreign Ministry reprimanded the diplomat for overstepping his authority to save thousands of Jews from the Holocaust, and deprived him of royal honors, new research has shown.
“If that happened,” Blok wrote, “that was completely inappropriate. Jan Zwartendijk earned recognition and tribute for his brave behavior, unfortunately posthumously, from the 1990s onwards.”
Blok said he and King Willem-Alexander of The Netherlands had spoken with Zwartendijk’s son and daughter.
“In doing so, there was great admiration for the actions of their father in 1940,” he wrote. Zwartendijk served in Kaunas as consul at the same time that Chiune Sugihara was there to represent Imperial Japan. The research into the treatment of Zwartendijk is part of a Dutch-language book published this month on his actions, titled “The Righteous” by biographer Jan Brokken.
Largely eclipsed by Sugihara, Zwartendijk was the initiator and chief facilitator of the rescue of more than 2,000 Jews by the two diplomats. Sugihara gave the refugees, who were fleeing German occupation, transit visas that enabled them to enter the Soviet Union. But they would have been unusable had Zwartendijk not given them destination visas to Curacao, then a Caribbean island colony of the Netherlands. Some of those rescued by Zwartendijk nicknamed him “the angel of Curacao.”
Both men acted without approval from their superiors. Unlike Sugihara, Zwartendijk risked his own life, as well as those of his wife and their three small children, who were all living under Nazi occupation.
Yet Zwartendijk, who died in 1976, was “given a dressing down” after his actions became known by a top Foreign Ministry official, Joseph Luns, who later became the head of NATO, the book revealed, based on interviews with people who were told about it by Zwartendijk and other materials. Zwartendijk’s children said their father was deeply offended by the treatment he had received. “Jan Zwartendijk deserved a statue, not a reprimand,” the ANP news agency quoted Sjoerdsma as saying early this month. “High time for an exoneration and apology to his descendants. I hope Foreign Minister Stef Blok does it.”Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, a Dutch lawmaker, said previously in a statement that the Foreign Ministry should apologize for how it had treated Zwartendijk, whom Israel in 1997 recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations – a non-Jew who risked his life to save Jews from the Holocaust.
The book also suggested that an unnamed ministry official had intervened with the Dutch royal house to prevent Zwartendijk from being knighted for reasons unrelated to the war — he was a senior executive at the Dutch Philips electronics firm — for his stepping out of line during World War II.
The memory of Jan Zwartendijk commemorated at the embassy of Lithuania in the Hague
Dutch Honorary consul to Lithuania Jan Zwartendijk was conferred posthumously a Lithuanian State Award, The Life Saving Cross, for the rescue of Jews during the Second World War. The award was presented to Jan Zwartendijk’s son Robert and daughter Edith at the ceremony, which took place on the 16th of February at the Embassy of Lithuania in The Hague. Read more
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