On September 1, 1939, Germany’s Adolph Hitler’s forces invaded Poland, marking the beginning of World War II.

By the time the war ended on September 2, 1945, more than 70 million people had been killed worldwide, including approximately 6 million European Jews.

What made the death of these 6 million Jews particularly horrifying, was that they were not battlefield deaths arising from the fighting between the two opposing sides (the Allies and the Axis powers).

Rather they were victims of a deliberate campaign of extermination; a genocide carried out on an industrial scale, with the specific objective of a complete elimination of the Jewish people from the face of the earth.

Since 2005, the world marks International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust on January 27 every year to remember the 6 million Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps.

The September 1, 1939, German invasion of Poland, backed by Slovakia and the Soviet Union, forced many Jews to flee and many ended up in Lithuania seeking temporary shelter.

Chiune Sugihara was still settling into his new posting as vice consul (acting consul) at the newly opened Japanese Consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania. He had been posted to the country sometime in 1939; the first Japanese diplomat in Lithuania.

Soon after the invasion, Sugihara found himself confronted with a dilemma—Jews seeking visas to flee Europe and the advancing German troops.

One possible route of escape was with a transit visa through Japan. But to qualify for this visa, one had to go through a long immigration procedure, prove they had enough money and had a visa to their final destination.

The Jewish refugees did not have the luxury of time to go through the process, neither did they have the money. Risking his job and endangering the lives of his family, Sugihara defied the rules and handwrote transit visas for Jewish refugees to travel through Japan territory.  

He reportedly helped about 2,000 families to escape.

In the words of one survivor, “Sugihara did this courageous act of issuing the visas against his government’s orders. He did it because his conscience dictated that he help people in a desperate situation. He wanted to do the right thing.”

Sugihara is the inspiration for the ‘Do the right thing’ essay writing contest, which was conceived nearly 20 years ago in the United States by Sylvia Smoller, one of the last living “Sugihara survivors”.

She narrates how she came up with the idea:

Smoller was in Japan to speak at a scientific conference and to donate her family’s passport with Sugihara’s signature.

In the audience, she says, was a young Japanese woman with her nine-year-old son. After Smoller’s talk, the young woman approached her and asked to introduce her son.

“I said, ‘How nice that you brought your little boy to this event, but he must have been very bored by all these speeches.’ She said, ‘Oh no, I want him to learn about Consul Sugihara and to have a hero to look up to. He needs a role model so he can grow up to be a just and decent man’,” Smoller says.

“This made a deep impression on me and when I came back to America I wanted to do something that would bring her idea to other young people and so I started this contest for high school students in New York, with help from Matt’s family.”

Matt Chanoff is Smoller’s nephew and a board member of Shining Hope for Communities (Shofco), an NGO which works to improve the lives of the people living in the Kibera slum.

“The New York students had to write an essay about some moral choice they had made in their own lives – how they had chosen to ‘do the right thing’, Smoller says.

In 2019, Chanoff sponsored the first ‘Do the right thing’ essay contest in Kenya, with the class of 2018 of Shofco Kibera School for Girls (KSG) taking part in it.

His aim was “to give the students the opportunity to reflect on what it means to ‘do the right thing’ in their own lives and of people in their communities; to learn about Chiune Sugihara and the Holocaust in general and to give these students, who come from some of the poorest communities in the world, a chance to speak out about people and acts that matter to them, and follow up with their own actions.”

On December 5, 2022, the fourth year of the contest in Kenya, Shofco awarded eight student winners.

The ceremony took place at the Japanese Embassy in Nairobi, a fitting tribute to the diplomat who inspired the contest.

It was presided over by Japanese Ambassador Ken Okaniwa.

Some 107 scholars took part in the contest, 22 of them from Tujenge Scholars Programme in Burundi. The contest expanded to Burundi in 2019 and “has really become an international competition”, in the words of Shofco’s Amy Hutchinson.

Four winners and four runners-up were picked by the judges, two from each category—Form 1, Form 2, Form 3 and Tujenge.

The 2022 grand prize winner was Holiness Ange Igiraneza from Burundi. Her essay was about her grandfather, who, like Sugihara, saved a family that was a victim of ethnic hatred. She wrote how in 1993 her Tutsi grandfather saved a family of Hutus by hiding them in his compound.

During the award ceremony, Holiness narrated how her grandfather stood between the Hutu family and a band of Tutsis who had come to kill them and told the attackers they would have to go through him first.

He later spirited the family away to Sare in Burundi, where tensions were much lower and “the family is still alive to this day”, she said.

“…when they asked him why he saved the lives of Hutus, he said that ‘I didn’t save the lives of Hutus, I saved the lives of human beings’,” Holiness narrated.

All the eight finalists received prize money that would be used to pay for their school fees and school supplies.     

Besides getting an “opportunity to reflect on what it means to “do the right thing” in their own lives and of people in their communities, [and] to learn about Chiune Sugihara and the Holocaust in general”, said Chanoff, “each winner’s prize included a budget to design and carry out a community service project.”

Apart from the individual cash prizes—winners Sh18,000 and runner-up Sh12,000—each pair received $250 (Sh31,025) for their community projects.

Holiness said she would use her share of the project cash to support Niyongabo Foundation in Burundi that is run by one man (Niyongabo), who takes in orphaned and homeless children, and enrols them in school. Currently, he’s housing about 145 children.

Holiness admires the fact that Niyongabo does not discriminate against the children on the basis of ethnicity and his projects are needs-based, hence, why she chose to support the foundation.  

Her fellow finalist in her category was Yvan Barcy Iteriteka, also from Tujenge Scholars. Barcy’s community project would involve helping people in rural areas learn how to use information technology.

The other six finalists were all Kenyan. In the Form 1 category were Pamphy Achieng and Jane Cindy Omondi, Form 1 students from Asumbi Girls High School.

In the second category were Cynthia Ayuma, a Form 2 student at Moi Girls High School - Eldoret, and Trena Busolo, a Form 2 student at Butere Girls High School. Finally, there were Form 3 student Vallery Shamala from Nova Pioneer and Form 3 student Diana Mutethya from Nakuru Girls High School.

Their projects included visiting and supporting Springs of Hope Rehabilitation Centre, Nairobi Rescue Centre, and Kabete Boys Rehabilitation Centre. Some of their objectives were to instil hope and a sense of belonging to the residents of these three institutions.

According to UNESCO, January 27 “…marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet troops on 27 January 1945.” The heroism of the Allied troops saved millions of lives. Individuals too, like Sugihara, played their part through brave acts of compassion and at great risk to their lives to save many innocent lives.

The stories of many individuals who have chosen to do the right never get told to the whole world like Sugihara’s. But some get to be told, as the ‘Do the right thing’ contest has shown. And some are passed down by word of mouth and go on to inspire others and create a ripple effect as exemplified by the contest finalists who have also set out to touch lives and do their own right thing.