Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story

Recommended Ages: 6-11

Written by Ken Mochizuki. Illustrated by Dom Lee.

One way to introduce young readers to the Holocaust is by teaching them about the helpers that saved lives during that time. Chihune Sugihara was the Japanese consul to Lithuania, when in 1940 Jewish refugees from Poland arrived at the consulate trying to get visas to Japan so they could escape the Nazis. This book is based on the words of Sugihara’s son Hiroki, who was five years old when his father rescued an estimated 10,000 Jewish people by granting them travel papers, in spite of his home country’s orders not to do so.