Jan Zwartendijk

Jan Zwartendijk (29 July 1896, Rotterdam – 1976) was a Dutch businessman and diplomat who helped Jews escape Lithuania during World War II.

Zwartendijk directed the Philips plants in Lithuania. On June 19 1940 he was also a part-time an acting consul of the Netherlands - or, to be exact, of the Dutch government-in-exile. His superior was the Dutch ambassador to Latvia, de Decker.

When the Soviet Union took over Lithuania in 1940, some Jewish Dutch residents in Lithuania approached Zwartendijk to get a visa to the Dutch Indies. With de Decker's permission, Zwartendijk agreed to help them. The word spread and Jews who had fled from Poland also sought his assistance.

In defiance of official diplomatic niceties, Zwartendijk signed a declaration that entering Curaçao in the West Indies did not require a visa, while omitting the second part of the standard notice that the permission of the governor of Curaçao was necessary. (In fact, the first visas of this kind were issued by de Decker himself earlier, and Jews approached Zwartendijk after news of this unusual possibility had spread.)

Then refugees approached Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese consul, who gave them a transit visa through Japan, also against official diplomatic rules. This gave many refugees an opportunity to leave Lithuania for the Far East via the Trans-Siberian railway.

In the three weeks after July 26, Zwartendijk wrote up over 2400 de facto visas to Curaçao and some of the Jews copied more. Many who helped only knew him as "Mr Philips Radio". When the Soviets closed down his Philips office on August 3, he returned to the occupied Netherlands to work in the Philips headquarters in Eindhoven. He did not talk about the matter.

Jan Zwartendijk died in 1976.

Yad Vashem bestowed the title "Righteous Among the Nations" on Zwartendijk in 1997.

In the novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" by Michael Chabon, it is implied that the protagonist Josef Kavalier receives visas from Zwartendijk and his ally Chiune Sugihara. Though the novel does not mention these men by name, it describes a "Dutch consul in Kovno who was madly issuing visas to Curaçao, in league with a Japanese official who would grant rights of transit" (p. 65).

External links

* [http://www.remember.org/righteous.html Zwartendijk in Remember.org]
* [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Zwartendijk.html Zwartendijk in the Jewish Virtual Library]
* [http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007092 Zwartendijk in Holocaust Encyclopedia]
* [http://isurvived.org/Rightheous_Folder/V-C_Jan_Zwartendijk.html Zwartendijk in Isurvived.org]
* [http://www.raoulwallenberg.net/?en/saviors/diplomats/2931.htm Zwartendijk in Raoul Wallenberg Foundation]