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Unique Carnegie Hall concert to honor Japanese diplomat Sugihara, who saved 6,000 Jews
For most of his life, Chiune Sugihara received little recognition for the dramatic actions he undertook as Japanese vice-consul to Lithuania on the eve of World War II: the rescue of some 6,000 Jews from Poland and elsewhere from the Nazi death machine.
For decades, the Jewish world remained largely ignorant of his heroism. When, in 1985, Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center located in Israel, honored the unassuming retired diplomat as a Righteous Among the Nations, Sugihara was too old and sick to travel to Jerusalem to accept the award. He died shortly after.
But his renown has grown in the years since his death, and now Sugihara is being celebrated in a new way with an extraordinary piece of music composed to commemorate his heroic actions.
On April 19 at Carnegie Hall, Japanese-American-Israeli cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper will perform this original piece of music — Lera Auerbach’s Symphony No. 6, “Vessels of Light” — accompanied by the New York City Opera Orchestra conducted by Constantine Orbelian.
The gala concert, organized by Yad Vashem and the American Society for Yad Vashem, which commissioned the piece, will pay tribute to Sugihara’s legacy.
Along with the honorary Dutch consul in Lithuania, Jan Zwartendijk, Sugihara issued life-saving visas to the Jews trying to escape Europe through a complex, illegal scheme involving fake transit visas via Japan to the Dutch-speaking Caribbean island of Curaçao.
Not a single Jew actually traveled to that faraway island off the coast of Venezuela, home to the oldest surviving synagogue in the Americas. But the operation — carried out under the noses of Lithuania’s Nazi occupiers — enabled thousands of Jews to resettle in Shanghai, leading to eventual freedom.
“Being half-Japanese myself, I understand the culture, and I know as a Japanese person that opposing authority goes against every fiber of our being,” Cooper, the cellist, said this month in an interview near her home in Tel Aviv. Born in New York to a mother of Japanese descent, Cooper later converted to Judaism and moved to Israel. She and her husband, Leonard Rosen, are
raising their three children as Orthodox Jews.
“Everybody’s heard of Schindler, who had a factory. But Sugihara had nothing to gain from this. In fact, he had everything to lose,” said Cooper, a visiting professor of music at Tel Aviv University. “He didn’t want recognition and never spoke to anybody about it. He didn’t even know that he had saved anybody until the very end of his life.”
Cooper, who studied at Julliard and comes from a long line of musicians — her father is a pianist and her mother a violinist and former concertmaster of the American Symphony — has a special personal connection to the Sugihara story.
Her husband’s father, Irving Rosen, was one of the Jews whose lives was saved by Sugihara’s actions. Armed with papers enabling Rosen’s family to leave Lithuania and emigrate to Curaçao via Japan, the entire family traveled via the Trans-Siberian Railway from Vilnius to Moscow to Vladivostok, then by sea to Japan — and eventually Shanghai.
“I became obsessed with this story and wanted people to know about it, especially given everything that’s going on in the world with the rise of authoritarian governments, mass dislocations, refugees, wars, rising antisemitism and anti-Asian hate,” Cooper said. “I’m not a writer, a filmmaker or an actress. I’m a musician. People had asked me, ‘Why not put together a nice concert in tribute to Sugihara?’ But I wanted to write something that could last forever.”
Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. (Courtesy of Yad Vashem)
With the backing of Yad Vashem and the American Society for Yad Vashem, Cooper asked Auerbach to write the piece, a 40-minute composition for solo cello, choir and orchestra involving 130 performers, including Yiddish “whisperers,” allusions to Psalm 121 and an introductory piece by Japanese composer Karen Tanaka titled “Guardian Angel.”
At Carnegie Hall, Cooper, who plays on an Italian-made Guadagnini cello from 1743, will perform Auerbach’s moving, large-scale symphonic work as a soloist. She’ll also perform in Prague on March 27, Los Angeles on May 18, in California’s Napa Valley on July 18 and in Warsaw on October 8.
“Most people do not pay attention to history, because they’re so wedded to current events,” said the Carnegie Hall event’s co-chair, Peter Till, a board member of the American Society for Yad Vashem. “But this is even more relevant today because of the rise of extremist hate groups. They’ll forever deny that it exists, or ignore it, or say it couldn’t happen here, but hate continues
to repeat itself and people have to face up to it.”
The Sugihara story is especially compelling, Till said, because it’s the first event of its kind that links Holocaust survivors with Asia in general — and Japan in particular.
“This is as much about the music as it is an expression of humanity, of people from diverse cultural backgrounds coming together to save lives,” he said. “For Yad Vashem, this is a very important event because it shows the depth of understanding.”
Of the roughly 28,000 non-Jews who’ve been designated by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations, only 40 were diplomats. Sugihara is the only Japanese citizen so honored.
“On the whole, the eligibility process for diplomats is slightly different than for ordinary rescuers, because they had immunity,” said Joel Zisenwein, director of Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations Department. “In most cases, they were not at physical risk. But many of them had defied the guidelines and official policies of their foreign offices. Sugihara is even more interesting because he represented an ally of Nazi Germany.”
Zisenwein said Sugihara provided between 2,100 and 3,500 transit visas, though the exact number is not known.
“Literally, all rescuers from the Holocaust era have passed away, so people accepting the award are generally descendants or even grandchildren of the recipients,” Zisenwein said. “It’s interesting that Sugihara received his award for actions prior to the German invasion of Lithuania. Most of the Jews he rescued were Polish refugees who had fled there in 1939. Many countries claim to have their own ‘Schindlers.’ But here indeed was an individual who saved thousands of Jewish lives.”
Japanese-American-Israeli cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper has a special personal connection to the Sugihara story. (Vardi Kahana)
The evening’s master of ceremonies will be Zalman Mlotek, who is also artistic director of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene. Tickets and sponsorships are still available for the event.
“It’s not just the people Sugihara saved. It’s the worlds of those thousands of people,” said Mlotek, whose father, Joseph Mlotek, was a 21-year-old Yiddish poet working at a newspaper in Warsaw when World War II broke out. After fleeing to Lithuania, the family heard about Sugihara and was able to obtain transit visas to Shanghai, where the elder Mlotek and his brother Abram spent the war years.
“My father became a Yiddish activist here in New York and set up a network of 200 Yiddish schools all over the country. He published books with my mother and did concert tours for Yiddish musicians,” said Mlotek, 71. “I look at myself today, as artistic director of the Yiddish theater for 20 years, carrying on this same legacy that would have been decimated had it not been for the heroism of Sugihara.”
Auerbach’s composition had its world premiere last November in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas (known in Yiddish as Kovno), where Sugihara’s story took place. Additional performances are scheduled for cities around the world through 2024.
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Mossad Reveals Foiled Iranian Terror Plots in Australia, Greece, and Germany
Iranians carry a model of a missile during a celebration following an IRGC attack on Israel, in Tehran, Iran, April 15, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
i24 News – The Mossad announced on Sunday that it had uncovered the mechanisms behind several Iranian-led terrorist plots thwarted in Australia, Greece, and Germany between 2024 and 2025. Israeli intelligence said multiple terror cells linked to these operations have been dismantled and their members arrested.
According to the agency, the Iranian regime has intensified efforts to target Israelis and Jewish communities worldwide in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks.
Mossad said close cooperation with international security services helped prevent multiple attacks, saving lives and enabling prosecutions.
One of the key figures named in the revelations is Sardar Amar, a senior commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and head of the 11th Brigade under Quds Force chief Esmail Qaani. Mossad claims Amar led a network tasked with striking Israeli and Jewish targets abroad and was directly connected to the foiled operations in Greece, Australia, and Germany.
The repeated failures of this network, according to the agency, led to the exposure of its operatives and infrastructure.
In response to the discovery of Iranian cells operating on their soil, Australia and Germany have taken diplomatic action. Canberra expelled the Iranian ambassador, declaring him persona non grata, while Berlin has called for similar measures. Both moves were described as signals of “zero tolerance” for state-sponsored terrorism.
Mossad said Iran continues to use terrorism as a strategic tool to attack Israel and Jewish civilians abroad while avoiding direct military or political confrontation. The exposure of Amar’s network, it added, highlights the growing challenges faced by Tehran’s covert apparatus.
The Israeli intelligence service emphasized that international efforts are increasingly constraining Iran’s ability to operate abroad, imposing diplomatic costs on the regime. “Mossad, together with its global partners, will continue to thwart terrorist threats emanating from Iran and its proxies to protect Israeli citizens and Jewish communities around the world,” the agency said.
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Israeli Military Says It Conducted ‘Targeted Strike’ in Central Gaza
A Palestinian man points a weapon in the air after it was announced that Israel and Hamas agreed on the first phase of a Gaza ceasefire, in the central Gaza Strip, October 9. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Israeli forces carried out a “targeted strike” on an individual in central Gaza who was planning to attack Israeli troops, Israel’s military said on Saturday.
A US-backed ceasefire is in force between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas just over two years since the war in the Gaza Strip began, but each side has accused the other of violations.
Israel said it had targeted a member of Islamic Jihad. On Sunday, the Palestinian terrorist group said in a statement that the Israeli military’s claim of a planned attack by the group was a “mere fallacious allegation.”
It did not say whether one of its members was killed in the Israeli strike.
Witnesses told Reuters they had seen a drone strike a car and set it ablaze. Local medics said four people had been wounded, but there were no immediate reports of deaths.
Witnesses said separately that Israeli tanks had shelled eastern areas of Gaza City, the Gaza Strip’s biggest urban area. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Several Israeli media sites said Israel, in a reversal of a policy of barring entry to foreign forces, had allowed Egyptian officials into the Gaza Strip to help locate the bodies of hostages taken captive in the Hamas-led attack on Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, that triggered the war.
As part of the ceasefire agreement, Hamas has said it will return all the hostages it abducted, but the remains of 13 are still in the enclave.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Does that Trump Time Magazine cover really reference a Nazi war criminal?
As Adolf Hitler’s armies rampaged across Europe and the Soviet Union, they were followed by German industrialists who plundered the occupied countries —seizing raw materials, dismantling factories and exploiting civilians as forced laborers. Private enterprise became embedded in the machinery of conquest and genocide.
Among them, few wielded more power than Alfried Krupp, owner and CEO of the vast industrial empire that bore his family’s name.
During the war, Krupp’s factories produced tanks, artillery, ships and munitions, operating more than 80 plants across Nazi-occupied Europe. About 100,000 forced laborers toiled in his mines and factories, including Jewish inmates from Auschwitz. Conditions were inhumane, especially for Jews and Soviet POWs, who endured beatings, starvation and exposure. The death toll remains uncertain, but it likely numbered in the many thousands.
Krupp was convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg in 1948 and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He served just 30 months.
After West Germany’s founding in 1949, the occupying powers came under intense pressure — from federal, state, and local officials, civilians, former Wehrmacht soldiers, and even religious leaders — to grant amnesties to war criminals. Many West Germans wanted to bury the past. As part of a deal to secure West Germany’s partnership in the emerging Cold War confrontation with the Soviet bloc, the U.S. and its allies acquiesced, freeing thousands of convicted war criminals. Among them was Krupp, who walked out of Landsberg Prison on Feb. 3, 1951.
Most Americans today have never heard of Alfried Krupp or his war crimes. And few could have guessed that his name would resurface because of a photograph of Donald Trump on the cover of Time Magazine.
Almost as soon as the Time cover appeared on social media, people began noticing that Trump’s pose was eerily similar to Krupp’s in a 1963 Newsweek photo. The resemblance went viral. Time denied any connection, but the visual echo struck a nerve — especially given Trump’s authoritarian turn in his second term.
So who was Alfried Krupp?
As often happens with Germans born into old dynasties, his full name is a mouthful: Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach.
The Krupp family’s involvement in arms production dates back to the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), when Anton Krupp oversaw a gunsmithing operation in Essen. Over the centuries, the family pioneered high-cast steel, revolutionized artillery, and gave Germany a decisive edge in conflicts like the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), cementing Krupp’s role as the empire’s premier arms supplier.
Alfried was the son of Bertha Krupp, heiress to the industrial empire, and Gustav von Bohlen und Halbach, a diplomat and industrialist. The Krupp firm supplied weapons and materials to Imperial Germany during World War I. Alfried joined the Nazi Party in 1938, though the company had aligned itself with the regime’s militarization years earlier. He assumed his father’s duties after the war began and collaborated closely with the SS, personally negotiating contracts for the use of concentration camp labor — including Jewish inmates from Auschwitz.
Krupp and 11 other executives were tried before a U.S. military tribunal in Nuremberg from December 1947 to July 1948, charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes and plunder. Krupp denied personal guilt and claimed his role was apolitical.
“We Krupps never cared much about [political] ideas. We only wanted a system that worked well and allowed us to work unhindered. Politics is not our business,” he said in 1947.
Prosecutors argued that Krupp’s firm was not merely complicit but actively expanded its empire through Nazi aggression. They documented the systematic looting of industrial assets from France, Belgium and the Netherlands, contracts with the SS for concentration camp labor, and the use of punishment cages for workers.
Convicted of war crimes for plundering occupied nations, Krupp was sentenced to 12 years in prison and ordered to forfeit all property and industrial holdings. One defendant was acquitted; the rest received sentences ranging from three to 12 years.
In the immediate postwar years, capturing Nazi war criminals was a top priority for the Allies. But priorities shifted. The Soviets came to be seen as a greater threat than ex-Nazis — a view welcomed by large segments of the West German public, who vocally demanded an end to war crimes trials and the release of prisoners.
On Jan. 31, 1951, John J. McCloy, the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, reduced the sentences of 79 inmates at Landsberg, many to time already served. Among them was Alfried Krupp, released four days later. McCloy also restored Krupp’s industrial holdings.
Across West Germany, government officials, judges, professors and captains of industry who had dutifully served the Third Reich returned to prominence — with tacit U.S. approval. It’s a theme I explore in my book Nazis At The Watercooler: War Criminals In Postwar German Government Agencies.
Krupp was among them.
After his release, he resumed control of his empire — steelworks, coal mines, munitions plants — his rehabilitation aided by silence and selective memory. He died of bronchial cancer on July 30, 1967, at age 59. His funeral drew about 500 guests, including prominent figures from West German business, politics and labor.
The 1963 Newsweek portrait of Krupp was taken by Jewish photographer Arnold Newman, who was initially reluctant.
“When the editors asked me to photograph him, I refused,” Newman told American Photo. “I said, ‘I think of him as the devil.’ They said, ‘Fine — that’s what we think.’ So I was stuck with the job.”
In the photo, taken at one of Krupp’s factories, he appears almost diabolical — leering at the camera with a calculating gaze, his chin resting on folded hands in a pose that suggests both command and contempt. The industrial backdrop — steel beams, harsh lighting and stark shadows — frames him like a villain in a modern morality play.
Trump hasn’t publicly commented on the new Time photo. But he complained bitterly about one that appeared just two weeks earlier: “They ‘disappeared’ my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Really weird!” he remarked.
The new cover, titled “Trump’s World,” seems more flattering. It shows him as the undisputed center of gravity — arms folded, gaze locked, seated in the Oval Office like a man who owns the room. Unlike Krupp, whose portrait radiated menace, Trump’s image is more ambiguous: part statesman, part strongman, part brand.
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