The Miracle of Chanukah 1939
[Part of the article "VISAS FOR LIFE: The Remarkable Story of Chiune and Yukiko Sugihara]
by Eric Saul

[VISAS FOR LIFE was first shown at the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles 1995. The photographic exhibit was created by Mr. Eric Saul, who provided the following narrative.]

The makings of a hero are many and complex, but Sugihara's fateful decision to risk his career may have been influenced by a simple act of kindness from an 11-year-old boy. He lived with his family in Lithuania, and his name was Zalke Jenkins (Solly Ganor).

Solly Ganor was the son of a menshevik refugee from the Russian revolution in the early 1920s. After the Russian revolution the family moved to Kaunas, Lithuania. The family prospered for years before World War II in textile import and export. Young Solly Ganor, concerned about Polish Jews entering Kaunas, gave most of his allowance and savings to the Jewish refugee boards. Having given away all of his money, he went to his aunt Annushka's gourmet food shop in Kaunas. He went there to borrow a Lithuania lit (Lithuanian dollar) to see the latest Laurel and Hardy movie. In his aunt's store he met Japanese Consul Chiune Sugihara. Consul Sugihara overheard the conversation and gave young Solly two shiny lit. Impulsively, the young boy invited the Consul with the kind eyes to his family celebration of the first night of Chanukah 1939.

The surprised and delighted Consul gratefully accepted the young boy's offer, and he and his wife Yukiko attended their first Jewish Chanukah celebration.

Mr. Sugihara commented on the closeness of the Jewish families and how it reminded him of his family, and of similar Japanese festivals. Fifty-four years later, Mrs. Sugihara remembers with delight the cakes and cookies and desserts offered to them during this Jewish festival of lights.

Solly Ganor and his father were soon friends with the Consul-General and they conversed in Russian. Later Solly Ganor and his father witnessed Consul Sugihara in his office calling the Russian officials to get permission to issue visas across the Russian borders. Solly Ganor and his father later received Sugihara visas but were unable to use them because they were Soviet citizens.

Most of the Ganor family were murdered in the Holocaust. Solly's sister Fanny and Aunt Anushka survived the war. Aunt Anushka returned to Lithuania and died in 1969. Fanny married Sam Skutelsky from Riga and eventually settled in the United States. Their son Robert, Solly's only living nephew, now lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Solly and his father spent over two years in the Kaunas ghetto before being deported to the Landsberg-Kaufering outer camps of Dachau in late 1944. They survived the war and moved to Israel. The older Ganor died peacefully in Tel Aviv in 1966.

Ironically, in May 1945, Solly Ganor was liberated by Japanese American soldiers of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion, men who had been interned in their own country.

To Solly, the Japanese face has come to symbolize kindness and liberation.