Chiune "Sempo" Sugihara (杉原 千畝 Sugihara Chiune, 1 January 1900 – 31 July 1986) was a Japanese diplomat who served as Vice-Consul for the Empire of Japan in Lithuania. During World War II, he helped between 10,000 and 40,000 Jews leave the country by issuing transit visas so that they could travel to Japanese territory, risking his career and his family's lives. The Jews who escaped were refugees from German-occupied Western Poland or Russian-occupied Eastern Poland, as well as residents of Lithuania. In 1985, Israel named him to the Righteous Among the Nations for his actions, the only Japanese national to be so honored.

From 18 July to 28 August 1940, aware that applicants were in danger if they stayed behind, Sugihara decided to grant visas on his own. He ignored the requirements and issued ten-day visas to Jews for transit through Japan, in violation of his orders. Given his inferior post and the culture of the Japanese Foreign Service bureaucracy, this was an unusual act of disobedience. He spoke to Soviet officials who agreed to let the Jews travel through the country via the Trans-Siberian Railway at five times the standard ticket price.

Sugihara continued to hand-write visas, reportedly spending 18–20 hours a day on them, producing a normal month's worth of visas each day, until 4 September, when he had to leave his post before the consulate was closed. By that time he had granted thousands of visas to Jews, many of whom were heads of households and thus permitted to take their families with them. According to witnesses, he was still writing visas while in transit from his hotel and after boarding the train at the Kaunas Railway Station, throwing visas into the crowd of desperate refugees out of the train's window even as the train pulled out.

In final desperation, blank sheets of paper with only the consulate seal and his signature (that could be later written over into a visa) were hurriedly prepared and flung out from the train. As he prepared to depart, he said, “Please forgive me. I cannot write anymore. I wish you the best.” When he bowed deeply to the people before him, someone exclaimed, “Sugihara. We’ll never forget you. I’ll surely see you again!”

Sugihara himself wondered about official reaction to the thousands of visas he issued. Many years later, he recalled, "No one ever said anything about it. I remember thinking that they probably didn't realize how many I actually issued."

The total number of Jews saved by Sugihara is in dispute, estimating about 6,000; family visas—which allowed several people to travel on one visa—were also issued, which would account for the much higher figure. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has estimated that Chiune Sugihara issued transit visas for about 6,000 Jews and that around 40,000 descendants of the Jewish refugees are alive today because of his actions. Polish intelligence produced some false visas. Sugihara's widow and eldest son estimate that he saved 10,000 Jews from certain death, whereas Boston University professor and author, Hillel Levine, also estimates that he helped "as many as 10,000 people", but that far fewer people ultimately survived. Indeed, some Jews who received Sugihara's visas failed to leave Lithuania in time, were later captured by the Germans who invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, and perished in the Holocaust.

One- Gong Xi Gong Xi Happy New Year. The last year of the Rooster we spent in Taipei.

On a more sober note, this is the 72nd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Holocaust Remembrance Day. My Miller lost family(aunts, uncles and cousins)to the camps....even those who had converted to Christianity.

Muslim students with Arab and Turkish origins protested participation in an International Holocaust remembrance event for the liberation of the German extermination camp Auschwitz on January, 27­ while the school management showed understanding for their criticism of Israel.

“Some Muslims students said they would not participate in the action,” said Florian Beer, a teacher at the school in the city of Gelsenkirchen in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, reported the paper Der Westen on Thursday.

Frederick Charles Blair was the director of the Government of Canada's Immigration Branch from 1936 to 1943. Blair developed and rigorously enforced strict immigration policies based on race and is most remembered for his successful effort to keep Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany out of Canada during the 1930s and the war years that followed. Between 1933-1939, Blair's office allowed less than 5000 Jews into Canada, in comparison to over 200,000 allowed into the United States, and 20,000 into Mexico. After the war, between 1945 and 1948, the Immigration Branch accepted only 8000 Jewish Holocaust survivors. "That record is arguably the worst of all possible refugee-receiving states", wrote Abella and Troper. Blair's rigorous enforcement of anti-Semitic immigration policies sealed the fate of thousands of European Jews who would have escaped death had Canada not turned them away.

Frederick Blair was born 1874 in Carlisle, Ontario, the son of Scottish parents. In 1903 he joined the Department of Agriculture and in 1905 he became an immigration officer. In 1924 he became assistant deputy minister of immigration and in 1936 became the director of the Immigration Branch. He was a church elder and a dedicated civil servant who oversaw every aspect of Canadian immigration. He ruled the Immigration Branch with an iron fist. "He was the single most difficult individual I have had to deal with... He was a holy terror", James Gibson, an official in the Department of External Affairs told Abella and Troper. Blair was anti-Semitic, as were many among the Canadian elite of the time. Though he couched his public statements and policies in generalized, protectionist language, Blair's letters and private conversations, quoted extensively in None Is Too Many, reveal his distaste for Jews.

Blair was the policy's architect and staunch champion for Canada's closed-door policy with the full support of the Liberal Party of Canada government of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. In September 1938, in a letter to the prime minister, Blair wrote, "Pressure by Jewish people to get into Canada has never been greater than it is now, and I am glad to be able to add that, after 35 years of experience here, that it has never been so carefully controlled".

None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948 is a book co-authored by the Canadian historians Irving Abella and Harold Troper and published in 1983 about Canada's restrictive immigration policy towards Jewish refugees during the Holocaust years. The book helped popularize the phrase "none is too many" in Canada.

First published in 1983 by Lester & Orpen Dennys, the book documents the history of the Canadian response to Jewish refugees from 1933, with the rise of the Nazi government in Germany, until 1948. The authors argue that while many nations were complicit in the Holocaust for their refusal to admit Jewish refugees during the Nazi era, the Canadian government did less than other Western countries to help Jewish refugees between 1933 and 1948. The most infamous example of Canada's immigration policy was the refusal to admit the MS St. Louis, a German ocean liner carrying refugees. Only 5,000 Jewish refugees entered Canada from 1933 until 1945, which the book argues was the worst of any refugee receiving nation in the world.

The authors identify Frederick Blair, the head of immigration in William Lyon Mackenzie King's government, as a top official who opposed and limited Jewish immigration. They say that Blair's policy had the full support of Mackenzie King, who was prime minister 1935–48, Vincent Massey, the high commissioner to Britain, and both Anglophone and Francophone elites in general.