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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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Eli Sharabi’s ‘Hostage’ memoir named Jewish book of the year
(JTA) — Eli Sharabi’s memoir “Hostage,” recounting his experience in Hamas captivity after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, has been named Book of the Year by the National Jewish Book Awards, organizers announced Wednesday.
The awards, presented by the Jewish Book Council and considered among the most prestigious honors in Jewish literature, recognize outstanding English-language books of Jewish interest across dozens of categories. Founded in 1950, the program is the longest-running North American awards initiative devoted to Jewish books.
Sharabi’s memoir, which details his abduction from Kibbutz Be’eri and the more than year he spent in captivity, became a bestseller in Israel and was later released in English in the United States.
“This recognition means so much to me, not only personally, but for the memory of my family and all those we lost,” Sharabi said in a statement. “’Hostage’ is my testimony, a story of my survival, written so others could bear witness. I hope it helps ensure that what happened is never forgotten.”
Other major winners reflect the breadth of contemporary Jewish writing, spanning scholarship, fiction, memoir and children’s literature.
In American Jewish studies, Pamela S. Nadell won for “Antisemitism, an American Tradition,” a look at the forms antisemitism took in the country from the early Dutch settlers to the present day. The Russian-born journalist Julia Ioffe took the autobiography and memoir prize for “Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy.” The book blends memoir, journalism and history to examine modern Russia through the lens of women’s experiences.
Jack Fairweather’s “The Prosecutor: One Man’s Battle to Bring Nazis to Justice,” the story of a Jewish judge and Holocaust survivor from Stuttgart who pursued Nazi perpetrators in post-war Germany, won the biography award.
Fiction honors went to Allison Epstein for “Fagin the Thief,” a retelling of the Dickens novel “Oliver Twist” from the perspective of its Jewish antihero, and Zeeva Bukai received the debut fiction prize for “The Anatomy of Exile,” about the multigenerational echoes of a secret love affair between an Israeli Jewish woman and a Palestinian poet.
The Hebrew fiction in translation category recognized “Dog,” by Yishay Ishi Ron, translated by Yardenne Greenspan, which also earned a selection in the book club category. The novella’s protagonist is an Israeli combat veteran haunted by his service in one of the Gaza campaigns prior to Oct. 7.
This year’s awards arrive as the Jewish discourse has been reshaped by the aftermath of Oct. 7, a global surge in antisemitism and the polarizing debate over Israel that followed. Last year’s winner for book of the year, “10/7: 100 Human Stories” by Lee Yaron, was also an account of the attacks and their aftermath.
Jewish anxieties in light of Oct. 7 are the subject of Sarah Hurwitz’s “As A Jew: Reclaiming Our Story From Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us,” which won in the contemporary Jewish life and practice category. Hurwitz, a speechwriter in the Obama administration, provides a primer on Jewish history, texts and practices in order to counter what she calls misinformation among Jews, their allies and their critics.
“Especially amid rising antisemitism and Jewish authors facing increased scrutiny, Jewish books have the power to create and sustain community,” said Naomi Firestone-Teeter, CEO of Jewish Book Council, in a statement announcing the winners.
In “Hostage,” Sharabi writes about the terror of his abduction and the daily struggle to survive after Hamas fighters stormed Kibbutz Be’eri. He would spend 491 days in captivity, much of it in tunnels beneath Gaza, before being released on Feb. 8, 2025, as part of a negotiated deal. Throughout the ordeal, Sharabi clung to the hope of rescue, writing: ‘I refuse to let myself drown in pain. I am surviving. I am a hostage. In the heart of Gaza. A stranger in a strange land. In the home of a Hamas-supporting family. And I’m getting out of here. I have to. I’m getting out of here. I’m coming home.”
Other nonfiction winners included Elissa Bemporad’s “Jews in the Soviet Union: A History: Revolution, Civil War, and New Ways of Life, 1917–1930, Volume 1,” which won in history; Anna Hájková’s “People Without History are Dust: Queer Desire in the Holocaust,” honored in Holocaust studies alongside translator William Ross Jones; and Tobias Schiff’s “Return to the Place I Never Left,” which won the Holocaust memoir award, with Dani James recognized for translation.
Awards recognizing contemporary Jewish thought and scholarship included Lawrence Grossman’s “Living in Both Worlds: Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States, 1945–2025,” and Debra Kaplan and Elisheva Carlebach’s “A Woman Is Responsible for Everything: Jewish Women in Early Modern Europe,” which won multiple prizes, including scholarship and women’s studies.
In children’s and young readers’ categories, Alison Goldberg’s “The Remembering Candle,” illustrated by Selina Alko, won for children’s picture book; Janice Shapiro’s “Honoria: A Fortuitous Friendship” took the prize for middle grade literature; and Eugene Yelchin’s graphic memoir “I Wish I Didn’t Have to Tell You This” won in young adult literature.
Other winners include Miriam Udel’s “Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children’s Literature,” which won in education and Jewish identity; Raegan Steinberg, Alexandre Cohen and Evelyne Eng’s “Arthurs: Home of the Nosh,” honored in food writing and cookbooks; Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s “Golden Threads,” which won for Sephardic culture; Elizabeth E. Imber’s “Uncertain Empire,” for writing based on archival material; and Aharon Shabtai’s “Requiem & Other Poems,” translated by Peter Cole, which won the poetry award.
The winners will be honored at an awards ceremony in New York next month hoisted by the entertainer Jonah Platt. At the ceremony, journalist Sam Feedman will be presented with the council’s Mentorship Award, named in honor of Carolyn Starman Hessel, longtime former director of the JBC. Freedman, a former New York Times reporter and professor at the Columbia Journalism School, taught a popular course that helped over 100 students turn their ideas into books, including “When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry,” Gal Beckerman’s 2010 history of the Soviet Jewry movement.
“Sam Freedman changed my life as a writer,” Beckerman said in a statement. “He believed in me before I believed in myself, pushed me to take my work seriously, and opened doors I didn’t even know existed. With tough love and deep generosity, he guided me through the daunting process of writing a book as if it were his own. What he did for me, he did for dozens of writers.”
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Andorra’s tiny Jewish community reels after local carnival features mock execution of Israeli effigy
(JTA) — An annual festival in Andorra drew condemnation from the country’s small Jewish community after an effigy bearing the Israeli flag was staged in a mock trial and then hung and shot.
The incident was part of the traditional Catalan festival Carnestoltes, which occurs yearly before Lent, the 40-day period that precedes Easter. At Monday’s festival in Andorra, where a mock king is typically tried and burned, organizers instead used an effigy wearing blue with the Israeli flag painted on its face.
During the festivities, the Israeli effigy was symbolically tried, hung, shot and burned, according to social media posts and a report in the Israeli outlet YNet.
ABERRANTE muestra de antisemitismo en Andorra durante el carnaval. pic.twitter.com/GeIdF635wd
— Dani Lerer (@danilerer) February 16, 2026
The incident drew outcry from the microstate’s tiny Jewish community, which only just got its first full-time rabbi, a Chabad emissary, in the last two years.
“This is a ritual they perform every year as part of carnival, where they mock many things,” Jewish Andorra resident Esther Pujol told YNet. “This time they dressed the effigy in the colors of the Israeli flag, with a Star of David on its face. They put it on trial, sentenced it to death and carried out the sentence by shooting and burning it. It is completely unacceptable.”
Pujol told the outlet that it was the first time she had seen the festival include anti-Israel or antisemitic elements, and that she had contacted Andorran lawmakers to express her outrage. The mayor of Encamp, the city where the incident took place, and local politicians took part in the ceremony, according to YNet.
The European Jewish Congress also decried the display in a post on X, writing that the mock-execution was a “deeply disturbing act that risks normalizing antisemitism and incitement.”
“This incident requires unequivocal condemnation, full clarification of responsibilities and concrete measures to ensure that antisemitism is never tolerated in public celebrations or institutions in Andorra or anywhere in Europe,” the post continued.
Other Lent festivities have also been the site of antisemitism in recent years, with Belgian celebrations in 2019 featuring antisemitic caricatures and a Spanish parade in 2020 featuring a Holocaust-themed display.
The incident marks a rare instance of open turmoil for Jews in Andorra, which is nestled between France and Spain in the Pyrenees mountains. While France and Spain have seen widespread pro-Palestinian protests and antisemitic incidents in recent years, Andorra has largely avoided similar tensions.
In September, Andorra formally announced its recognition of Palestinian statehood alongside a host of other European nations during the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.
But local Jews have also sought to remain under the radar, considering that Andorra officially prohibits non-Catholic houses of worship. The Jewish community calls their gathering place a community center rather than a synagogue. In 2023, Andorra’s parliament elected a Jewish lawmaker for the first time.
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British woman who removed an Israeli hostage poster from a memorial site is convicted of theft
(JTA) — A British woman who is married to a Jewish anti-Zionist activist has been convicted of theft in connection with a 2024 incident in which she removed an Israeli hostage poster and threw it in the trash.
Fiona Monro, 58, of Brighton, England, was found guilty of theft, but not convicted of criminal damage for charges stemming from a February 2024 incident in which she took a large laminated poster of Israeli hostage Tzachi Idan and disposed of it.
A relative of Idan who lives in a neighboring town, Howe, returned the poster to the memorial site after Monro threw it away. A week later, Monro also wrote the phrase “Pray for the 30,000 murdered Palestinians” on the memorial but was acquitted of charges related to the vandalism, according to Brighton and Hove News.
The incident came at a time when Israeli hostage posters were being vandalized frequently by activists across the globe who said they were protesting the war in Gaza. The war began when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages. Idan was killed in Hamas captivity and his remains were returned to Israel a year ago during a negotiated ceasefire.
“This crime was one out of 50 times the memorial was vandalised and it took two years to get justice. But it is possible to get a win,” Heidi Bachram, one of the memorial’s organizers, told the Jewish News following Monro’s convict. “We cannot let hateful people get away with attacking us.”
Monro told police that the memorial located in Brighton’s Palmeira Square “did not represent the Jewish community,” citing her marriage to the prominent activist Tony Greenstein. Greenstein was expelled from Great Britain’s Labour Party in 2018 over his social media comments about Israel, which his party deemed antisemitic.
“The board was clearly there to justify the genocide that was happening,” Monro said in the police interview. “A large laminated board with a photograph of a hostage was highly inflammatory to many people in that community clearly found it very upsetting to have that constantly thrust in our face daily.”
After Monro’s lawyer, Hamish McCallum, requested that the jury consider whether it was proportionate to convict her on the basis she was exercising her right to express her political views, Judge Stephen Mooney rejected the proposal.
“This is not therefore a case of the state seeking to prosecute the defendant disproportionately for expressing her own views or otherwise interfering with her rights,” said Mooney. “It is a case of the state prosecuting the defendant for putting her views above those of others and causing them wholly unnecessary distress by so doing.”
Mooney gave Monro an 18-month conditional discharge and ordered her to pay $1,637 in prosecution costs.
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