The Just: How Six Unlikely Heroes Saved Thousands of Jews from the Holocaust - Hardcover
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The remarkable story of how a consul and his allies helped save thousands of Jews from the Holocaust in one of the greatest rescue operations of the twentieth century.
Jan Zwartendijk was just a businessman who worked for Philips, a manufacturer of lightbulbs and radios--until he became Dutch consul and concocted a secret plan that would ultimately save over 2,000 Jews from the Holocaust. An unsung hero, those he saved knew him only as "Mr. Philips Radio." This is his story.
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 Cura ao 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.
In The Just, renowned author Jan Brokken wrests this story from oblivion and traces the journeys of a number of the rescued Jews. This epic narrative shows how, even in life-threatening circumstances, some people make the right choice at the right time.
Jan Brokken is a writer of fiction, travel, and literary nonfiction. He gained international fame with The Rainbird, The Blind Passengers, My Little Madness, Baltic Souls, In the House of the Poet, The Reprisal, and The Cossack Garden, and his books have been translated into ten languages. The Just is his latest book.
McKay, David: -David McKay is an award-winning literary translator who lives in The Hague. His recent translations include The Convert by Stefan Hertmans, a novel about a young Norman woman who converts to Judaism at the time of the First Crusade, and the classic political novel Max Havelaar about Dutch misrule in the East Indies, a joint translation with Ina Rilke that was shortlisted for the Oxford Weidenfeld Prize. For more information, see www.openbooktranslation.com
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