lrytas.lt

Japan is a market of 125 million tourists. Kaunas is attractive as a destination for them because of the memory of Righteous Gentile Chiune Sugihara. Much has been done, but much more needs to be done, including presenting Kaunas as a kind of Casablanca of the North. Šiauliai University lecturer and historian Dr. Simonas Strelcovas recently returned from the land of the rising sun. There he researched Japanese attitudes towards Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul who issues thousands of visas to Jews in Kaunas in 1940, thus saving them. In Japan he is greatly honored. The historian says this respect should be exploited to attract tourists. Dr. Strelcovas is certain the nature of Lithuania then when the rescuer operated needs to be told. That Lithuania was not Nazi, and that, unlike other European states, accepted tens of thousands of refugees. He’s planning to reveal all this in an academic book in Japanese to be published next year.

Full story in Lithuanian here.