Saint Chiune Sugihara (baptized as Sergius). A Japanese consul who saved the lives of more than 6,000 people. To escape death, Jewish families from Poland and Lithuania fled to the Soviet Union. However, according to the laws and agreements with Germany at the time, the refugees were soon to be deported back. They could only be saved by diplomats who were willing to issue transit visas through the USSR on behalf of their governments. The Soviet consul, whose name history has not preserved, was willing to issue transit visas to anyone who wanted one, but on one condition: they had to hold a Japanese transit visa in order to travel through the USSR and Japan to other countries in the Pacific region. On July 31, 1940, Consul Sugihara received an order from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs strictly forbidding him from issuing visas to anyone. But Chiune Sugihara was a Christian and chose to act against this order. He told his loved ones and colleagues, "If I turn my back on those who need my help, I will betray my faith as a Christian." Although the decision to break his authorities' orders was not easy for a man raised in a culture of rigid hierarchy, he still chose to issue thousands of transit visas for Jewish families. Many refugees lacked the necessary documents to formally obtain a visa, most did not have enough money to pay for it, and some had no documents at all. Sugihara signed everything. Throughout August 1940, Sugihara spent the entire month at his desk. The official visa forms quickly ran out, forcing him to draw them by hand, which significantly increased his workload. Typewriter keys broke under his fingers. To meet his self-imposed quota of 300 visas per day, the consul worked from eight in the morning until late at night. Even when the consulate was closed, he continued issuing transit documents from his hotel room. When the diplomat was finally ordered to leave Lithuania, he threw the last clean sheets of paper, pre-stamped with his seal, out of the window of the departing train. In total, Sugihara managed to issue 2,139 official visas. As the train moved away, he threw his official stamp into the crowd so that people could write their own documents by forging his signature. The "disobedient" diplomat was sent from Kaunas to Prague, then to Königsberg, and finally to Bucharest, where he was arrested by Soviet forces. For a year and a half, the former consul and his family were held in a camp for diplomatic workers in Romania. Chiune was finally allowed to return to his homeland in 1947. In Japan, however, Sugihara was not welcomed back warmly. He was fired from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Formally, his termination was labeled as a "reduction of staff." Unofficially, he was told he was dismissed because of his insubordination during the "Lithuanian incident." Furthermore, he was blacklisted, making it impossible for him to secure employment at any other government institution. In order to feed his family, Sugihara took any job he could find. Given his age and background, finding decent employment at that time was practically impossible. He worked as a part-time translator and tutor, and even sold electric light bulbs. Yet, according to the memoirs of Sugihara's wife, Yukiko, Chiune never complained about the government or the ministry that had deprived him of his livelihood. He also never bragged to anyone that more than 6,000 people owed him their lives. In 1960, Sugihara finally secured a good job in the sales department of a private Japanese company in Moscow. It was there, in 1968, that one of the people he had saved finally recognized him. It turned out that ever since the end of the war, those whom Sugihara had saved had banded together to search for the Japanese diplomat who had risked his life and career for them.