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(1) They say that sometimes life is stranger than fiction. It certainly is in my case. I was Jackson's age when Hitler's armies invaded the Soviet union murdering in its wake millions of Jews. Lithuania, where I was born, was first to be attacked. I was among the few lucky survivors, as most of the Jews of Lithuania perished. After four years in the ghetto Kovne and the notorious concentration camp of Dachau, the US army liberated me on May 2, 1945. I immigrated to Israel and fought in its war of independence. It is my home to this day, but during the summer months we live in La Jolla California.

(2) During World War II, like Anna Frank, I kept a diary which fifty years later was published in New York under the title "Light One Candle." It was later translated into German and Japanese.

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(3) I am 73-year-old man who went through the Holocaust and participated in five wars against the Arabs in Israel.

(4) As you can imagine, these difficult years left its marks on me. Coming to Detroit would not be an easy matter. I was about to refuse his invitation, when I remembered an incident in my life that made me change my mind.

(5) It was on Hanukah, December 1939. I was eleven years old. World War Two had started a few months earlier and the Nazis had occupied Poland. Lithuania was still an independent country at that time, and thousands of Jewish refugees came swarming into Lithuania telling us of the atrocities the Germans committed against the Jews.

(6) During that time a Japanese consul, by the name of Chiune Sugihara, came to Lithuania and moved in to a house not far from where we lived. Soon afterwards, I met him at my aunt's gourmet shop where he was purchasing some chocolates for his children.

(7) I had come to collect from my aunt my Hanukah money and saw this elegant dressed gentleman with strange slanted eyes. I stared at him and he laughed and there was kindness in his laughter. I immediately took to him. He spoke perfect Russian, and my aunt explained to him the Jewish custom of Hanukah money given by family members to the children. He immediately offered me some coins.

(8) I wanted the money, but told him that I couldn't take it because he was not family. He just smiled and told me that for this Hanukah he is going to be my uncle.

(9) "You can consider me your uncle, he said." I took the coin and the Sugiharas became my family to this day.

(10) There is an old Jewish saying, "life and death is on the tip of your tongue."

(11) To this day I don't know what made me say it, but I blurted out, "If you are my uncle why don't you come to our Hanukah party on Saturday?" This invitation by an eleven-year-old boy resulted in a strange friendship between the Japanese consul and me. He accepted my invitation and actually came with his wife Yokiko to our Hanukah party. Our families became good friends and I would often go to the consulate to get cookies from his wife Yokiko. He would also give me an envelope filled with Japanese stamps for my collection. Six months later we found out what a humanitarian Chiune Sugihara was, when he issued thousands of visas to Jewish refugees saving their lives. There are over forty thousand survivors and their descendents today in the world, simply because of one man, Sempo, Chiune Sugihara.

(12) In her book, "Visas For Life," recently translated into English, his wife Yokiko Sugihara wrote: "The decision to issue visas to the Jewish refugees may have been influenced by a young boy named Solly Ganor."

(13) If that is true, then my life has not been in vain.

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Solly Ganor
Herzelia, Israel
October 26, 2001