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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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21 Arab, Islamic, African States and Entities Condemn Israel’s Recognition of Somaliland
The signatories’ flags enclosed in the statement in Arabic. Photo: Screenshot via i24.
i24 News – A group of 21 Arab, Islamic and African countries, organizations and entities issued on Saturday a joint statement condemning Israel’s recognition of Somaliland sovereignty.
The statement’s signatories said that they condemn and reject Israel’s recognition of Somaliland “in light of the serious repercussions to peace and security in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea region, and its serious impacts on international peace and security, which also reflects Israel’s clear and complete disregard for international law.”
It was signed by: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Qatar, Jordan, Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Libya, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Comoros, Djibouti, Gambia, Maldives, Nigeria and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
The joint statement voiced support “for the sovereignty of Somalia and reject any measures that would undermine its unity, territorial integrity, and sovereignty over all its lands.”
The signatories also “categorically reject linking Israel’s recognition of the territory of the land of Somalia with any plans to displace the Palestinian people outside their land.”
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Nvidia, Joining Big Tech Deal Spree, to License Groq Technology, Hire Executives
A NVIDIA logo appears in this illustration taken Aug. 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Nvidia has agreed to license chip technology from startup Groq and hire away its CEO, a veteran of Alphabet’s Google, Groq said in a blog post on Wednesday.
The deal follows a familiar pattern in recent years where the world’s biggest technology firms pay large sums in deals with promising startups to take their technology and talent but stop short of formally acquiring the target.
Groq specializes in what is known as inference, where artificial intelligence models that have already been trained respond to requests from users. While Nvidia dominates the market for training AI models, it faces much more competition in inference, where traditional rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices have aimed to challenge it as well as startups such as Groq and Cerebras Systems.
Nvidia has agreed to a “non-exclusive” license to Groq’s technology, Groq said. It said its founder Jonathan Ross, who helped Google start its AI chip program, as well as Groq President Sunny Madra and other members of its engineering team, will join Nvidia.
A person close to Nvidia confirmed the licensing agreement.
Groq did not disclose financial details of the deal. CNBC reported that Nvidia had agreed to acquire Groq for $20 billion in cash, but neither Nvidia nor Groq commented on the report. Groq said in its blog post that it will continue to operate as an independent company with Simon Edwards as CEO and that its cloud business will continue operating.
In similar recent deals, Microsoft’s top AI executive came through a $650 million deal with a startup that was billed as a licensing fee, and Meta spent $15 billion to hire Scale AI’s CEO without acquiring the entire firm. Amazon hired away founders from Adept AI, and Nvidia did a similar deal this year. The deals have faced scrutiny by regulators, though none has yet been unwound.
“Antitrust would seem to be the primary risk here, though structuring the deal as a non-exclusive license may keep the fiction of competition alive (even as Groq’s leadership and, we would presume, technical talent move over to Nvidia),” Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday after Groq’s announcement. And Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s “relationship with the Trump administration appears among the strongest of the key US tech companies.”
Groq more than doubled its valuation to $6.9 billion from $2.8 billion in August last year, following a $750 million funding round in September.
Groq is one of a number of upstarts that do not use external high-bandwidth memory chips, freeing them from the memory crunch affecting the global chip industry. The approach, which uses a form of on-chip memory called SRAM, helps speed up interactions with chatbots and other AI models but also limits the size of the model that can be served.
Groq’s primary rival in the approach is Cerebras Systems, which Reuters this month reported plans to go public as soon as next year. Groq and Cerebras have signed large deals in the Middle East.
Nvidia’s Huang spent much of his biggest keynote speech of 2025 arguing that Nvidia would be able to maintain its lead as AI markets shift from training to inference.
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Russian Drones, Missiles Pound Ukraine Ahead of Zelensky-Trump Meeting
Rescuers work at the site of the apartment building hit by a Russian drone during a Russian missile and drone strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine December 27, 2025. REUTERS/Viacheslav Ratynskyi
Russia attacked Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and drones on Saturday, ahead of what President Volodymyr Zelensky said would be a crucial meeting with US President Donald Trump to work out a plan to end nearly four years of war.
Zelensky cast the vast overnight attack, which he said involved about 500 drones and 40 missiles and which knocked out power and heat in parts of the capital, as Russia’s response to the ongoing peace efforts brokered by Washington.
The Ukrainian leader has said Sunday’s talks in Florida would focus on security guarantees and territorial control once fighting ends in Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two, started by Russia’s 2022 invasion of its smaller neighbor.
The attack continued throughout the morning, with a nearly 10-hour air raid alert for the capital. Authorities said two people were killed in Kyiv and the surrounding region, while at least 46 people were wounded, including two children.
“Today, Russia demonstrated how it responds to peaceful negotiations between Ukraine and the United States to end Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Zelensky told reporters.
In Russia, air defense forces shot down eight drones headed for Moscow, the city’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Saturday.
THOUSANDS OF HOMES WITHOUT HEAT
Explosions echoed across Kyiv from the early hours on Saturday as Ukraine’s air defense units went into action. The air force said Russian drones were targeting the capital and regions in the northeast and south.
State grid operator Ukrenergo said energy facilities across Ukraine were struck, and emergency power cuts had been implemented across the capital.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said the attack had left more than a million households in and around Kyiv without power, 750,000 of which remained disconnected by the afternoon.
Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said over 40% of residential buildings in Kyiv were left without heat as temperatures hovered around 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) on Saturday.
TERRITORIAL CONTROL: A DIPLOMATIC STUMBLING BLOCK
On the way to meeting Trump in Florida, Zelensky stopped in Canada’s Halifax to meet Prime Minister Mark Carney, after which they planned to hold a call with European leaders.
In a brief statement with Zelenskiy by his side, Carney noted that peace “requires a willing Russia.”
“The barbarism that we saw overnight — the attack on Kyiv — shows just how important it is that we stand with Ukraine in this difficult time,” he said, announcing 2.5 billion Canadian dollars ($1.83 billion) in additional economic aid to Ukraine.
Territory and the future of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant remain the main diplomatic stumbling blocks, though Zelensky told journalists in Kyiv on Friday that a 20-point draft document – the cornerstone of a US push to clinch a peace deal – is 90% complete.
He said the shape of U.S. security guarantees was crucial, and these would depend on Trump, and “what he is ready to give, when he is ready to give it, and for how long.”
Zelensky told Axios earlier this week that the US had offered a 15-year deal on security guarantees, subject to renewal, but Kyiv wanted a longer agreement with legally binding provisions to guard against further Russian aggression.
Trump said the United States was the driving force behind the process.
“He doesn’t have anything until I approve it,” Trump told Politico. “So we’ll see what he’s got.”
Trump said he believed Sunday’s meeting would go well. He also said he expected to speak with Putin “soon, as much as I want.”
FATE OF DONETSK IS KEY
Moscow is demanding that Ukraine withdraw from a large, densely-urbanized chunk of the eastern region of Donetsk that Russian troops have failed to occupy in nearly four years of war. Kyiv wants the fighting halted at the current lines.
Russia has been grinding slowly forwards throughout 2025 at the cost of significant casualties on the drone-infested battlefield.
On Saturday, both sides issued conflicting claims about two frontline towns: Myrnohrad in the east and Huliaipole in the south. Moscow claimed to have captured both, while Kyiv said it had beaten back Russian assaults there.
Under a US compromise, a free economic zone would be set up if Ukrainian troops pull back from parts of the Donetsk region, though details have yet to be worked out.
Axios quoted Zelensky as saying that if he is not able to push the US to back Ukraine’s position on the land issue, he was willing to put the 20-point plan to a referendum – as long as Russia agrees to a 60-day ceasefire allowing Ukraine to prepare for and hold the vote.
On Saturday, Zelensky said it was not possible to have such a referendum while Russia was bombarding Ukrainian cities.
He also suggested that he would be ready for “dialogue” with the people of Ukraine if they disagreed with points of the plan.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Kyiv’s version of the 20-point plan differed from what Russia had been discussing with the US, according to the Interfax-Russia news agency.
But he expressed optimism that matters had reached a “turning point” in the search for a settlement.
($1 = 1.3671 Canadian dollars)