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It has taken more than 20 years to bring my campaign to honor Jan Zwartendijk, the honorary Dutch consul in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1940, to successful completion. I received information from Rabbi Ronald Gray of the Boys Town Jerusalem Foundation that Israel's Holocaust memorial agency, Yad Vashem, has decided to honor Jan Zwartendijk as a non-Jewish rescuer of Jews, one of the "Righteous among the Nations." Gray said that the Zwartendyk family soon will be getting a letter from Yad Vashem informing them that there will be a ceremony in Israel honoring their father. I had learned of Jan Zwartendijk's identity through a letter to the "Jewish Post & Opinion" in January, 1976. Sugihara and Zwartendijk both were nominated in 1968 to be honored by Yad Vashem by Zorach Wahrhaftig, one of the recipients of the Zwartendijk/Sugihara visas, later on to become Israel's Minister of religion. However, Zwartendijk was bypassed since no one was aware that he had taken serious risks to himself and his family. He acted despite the knowledge that he would be forced to return to Nazi occupied Holland, where a word to the Gestapo would have doomed him. Yad Vashem had been told that Sugihara had taken risks and "was summarily discharged from his post", which was later proven incorrect. Indeed he was transfered several times, and promoted. Last year Zwartendijk was memorialized in the memorial garden at Boys Town Jerusalem in Israel. Now he will finally be appropriately honored at Yad Vashem. Ernest G. Heppner
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
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