It seems extraordinary that today, so many years after the Holocaust, there are still stories of heroism coming to light. The Just, first published in 2018 as De rechtvaardigen but now available in an English translation by David McKay, is the story of the Dutch Honorary Consul Jan Zwartendijk and his Japanese counterpart, Chiune Sugihara who in the period 16 July – 3 August 1940 enabled the escape of thousands of Jews by providing them with transit documentation and visas out of Lithuania.

All over Europe Jews were fleeing the Nazis, but Lithuania was no safe haven. Refugees came from German-occupied Western Poland and Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland, and included residents of Lithuania who knew they were at risk too. When they came in desperation to Zwartendijk, with approval of his boss the Dutch Ambassador L.P.J. De Decker, he conceived the idea of annotating passports to allow entry without visa to one of two Dutch colonies beyond the reach of Nazi Germany: either Curaçao, in the Caribbean or Suriname in South America. Their route was to take them across risky territory in the USSR to Japan before travelling onward, so they needed a transit visa from the Japanese Consul too. Zwartendijk was able to speed up operations by having a stamp made so that only his signature was needed, but even with a stamp Sugihara had to write seven columns of Japanese calligraphy for each one. Both men worked 20 hour days to process thousands of passports: Zwartendijk issued nearly 2,200 before he was forced to leave Kaunas, (and some issued illegally after that) and Sugihara was still providing these life-saving documents even as his train pulled out of the station. Brokken's research shows that there are Jewish families in Melbourne who owe their lives to these brave men.

One of the extraordinary aspects of this story is that there is documentary evidence that Stalin personally approved the refugees' transit through the USSR to Japan. In 1940 his stance was to stand up against anti-Semitism, and he made notes for a speech in which he described anti-Jewish hatred as 'cannibalism' and 'a crime'. He bragged about the Jewish homeland he had established near the Chinese border: 'The tsars wouldn't give the Jews any land, but we have.' In trying to interpret this quixotic support for Jews, Brokken suggests two motives: that by charging an exorbitant fee for the journey on the Trans-Siberian Express to Vladivostok — in American dollars no less, at a time when the mere possession of the currency meant very heavy penalties — the USSR had valuable foreign currency for the purchase of armaments. It's also possible that Stalin intended to boost the Jewish population in Birobidzhan...

Zwartendijk and Sugihara were not the only heroes quietly risking their lives in this way.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/07/23/the-just-de-rechtvaardigen-by-jan-brokken-tr... ( )

In De rechtvaardigen vertelt Brokken het verhaal van Jan Zwartendijk, een Philips-man die tijdens WOII consul is in Kaunas, Litouwen. Als hem duidelijk wordt hoezeer de Joodse bewoners van Litouwen, maar ook Polen, als ratten in de val zitten en moeten vrezen voor hun leven, verzint hij een list. Zwartendijk begint met het uitschrijven van transitvisa voor Curacao. Hij heeft het plan perfect afgestemd met de Japanse consul, die ook in Kaunas is gevestigd en visa uitschrijft om door Japan te mogen reizen. Joden kunnen met deze visa met de Trans Siberië Expres naar en door Japan reizen. Vanuit Kobe reizen de overlevers naar Israel, de Verenigde Staten en Latijns Amerika, soms met tussenstop Shanghai. Op deze wijze weten ze duizenden Joden te redden.

In De rechtvaardigen komen nabestaanden van Zwartendijk aan het woord en ook nakomelingen van Joden die dankzij Zwartendijk de oorlog hebben overleefd. Brokken duikt in de veelbewogen geschiedenis van een aantal van de overlevers. Zeer gedetailleerd en met een groot inlevingsvermogen zet hij de personages neer.

Het boek zit vol beeldende beschrijvingen van het leven in Kaunas en andere Europese landen in de aanloop naar en tijdens WOII. Ook mij totaal onbekende verhalen over de Joodse gemeenschappen in Shanghai en Kobe worden verteld. Een mooi uitgewerkt boek over iemand die door zijn dappere keuze redder werd van velen. ( )

Naar mijn smaak teveel uitwijdingen en details. Na enkele uren lezen ben ik daarom gestopt. ( )