The name Jan Zwartendijk will not sound familiar with everyone, but 'Mister Radio Philips' saved thousands of Jews during World War II by providing them with what became known as a Curaçao destination visa. Olga Coolen, director of the museum, talks about it.
Rats in a trap
In June 1940, the Dutch ambassador in Latvia, L. P. J. de Decker, approached Jan Zwartendijk, branch manager of Philips in Kaunas, and asked whether he would temporarily assume the position of honorary consul. Zwartendijk accepted, figuring that there would surely be only a handful of Dutch citizens who might need his help. He began his consular duties on June 14. The following day, the Red Army invaded Lithuania. Before becoming Dutch consul, Zwartendijk had befriended Nathan Gutwirth, a Jewish Dutch yeshiva student with whom he talked about soccer and shared his Dutch newspapers. 'Nathan told him that many Jewish refugees wanted to leave the country, but had nowhere to go because surrounding countries had closed their borders to them,' Olga says. 'People were trapped like rats.'
Photo: Left, Curaçao destination visa. No. 1475; right: Japanese transit visa.
Life on the line
When two Dutch nationals, Nathan Gutwirth and Pessla Lewin, individually contacted Dutch ambassador de Decker to ask about visas to the Dutch West Indies, he informed them that no visa was needed. But that admission depended on permission from the local governor, which was rarely granted. Nathan and Pessla suggested that he leave out the reference to the governor’s permission. De Decker then carefully worded an endorsement stating that no visa was required for entry, while quietly omitting that the governor's permission was still needed. He stamped this wording into Pessla’s Dutch passport—the only such endorsement he would issue himself—then asked Jan Zwartendijk to copy the wording into the Dutch passports of Pessla’s mother and brother, and Nathan Gutwirth, and into the leidimas (ID) of her Polish husband.
From Lithuania to Japan
Nathan Gutwirth showed his endorsement to Zorach Warhaftig, a prominent Zionist leader among the Polish Jewish refugees. Warhaftig asked him to find out whether Zwartendijk would issue the same to other refugees. Gutwirth returned to Zwartendijk, who immediately agreed to issue one to anyone who came to his office. Word spread quickly, and soon thousands lined up outside the Dutch consulate. Jan Zwartendijk issued these endorsements completely on his own authority and at his own risk. After receiving their Curaçao destination visas, the refugees went to the Japanese consulate where Consul Sugihara issued them transit visas to Japan. Those lucky enough to also succesfully apply for Soviet exit permits travelled via the Trans-Siberia Railway to Vladivostok and from there to Japan. From Japan, refugees could apply for valid destination visas to other countries. Olga: 'A monument has now been erected in the place where he issued those visas for days at a time. The highest recorded visa number is 2,345! But the number is likely even higher, due to illegal copies and the children that travelled with their parents.'
Thousands of survivors
After the Soviets closed his Philips office and Dutch consulate, Zwartendijk no longer felt safe in Lithuania, and returned to the Netherlands where for the remaining years of the German occupation he feared that the Nazis might arrest him because of his activities in Kaunas. After the war he was summoned to and reprimanded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for not following protocol and issuing these non-existant so-called destination visas. At the time, Joseph Luns was minister. So a ribbon of honor was out of the question, although his relatives received an official apology from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2018. Yet this is not what bothered Zwartendijk for the rest of his life. What really tormented him was the uncertainty about the fate of the thousands of people he had issued visas to. 'Jan had no idea whether he had unintentionally driven all those people to their deaths,' says Olga. 'He died in 1976, and the tragic thing is that a on the day of his funeral, a a letter arrived from Rabbi Marvin Tokayer, who had spent years researching the fate of the Jewish refugees who had reached Japan from Lithuania. His research showed that 2,178 of them had survived. Unfortunately, for safety reasons, Jan Zwartendijk had to burn his consulate records when the Soviets closed his office in August 1940. The highest visa number found was 2,345. That would mean at least 95% of the refugees survived the war.'
Japanese Spring
One such survivor was Abraham Liwer, the Jewish owner of a bicycle parts factory. After the Germans invaded Poland, he fled his town of Będzin with his wife and daughter to Lwów. Warned that the Soviet authorities had been informed that he was a capitalist, Abraham fled to Vilnius on his own. While there, he discovered that his wife and daughter had been deported to a labor camp in Siberia. Months later, after reaching Vladivostok, he succeeded in persuading the local NKVD authorities to contact Moscow on their behalf, and eventually his wife and daughter were released. From Vladivostok, like the other refugees arriving from Kaunas, they took a boat to Japan. There, with the help of Polish Ambassador Tadeusz Romer, half of them were issued valid destination visas to various countries; the others were sent to Shanghai for the duration of the war. Another survivor was Marcel Weijland, just twelve years old at the time. After fleeing Poland in September 1939, his family got in touch with Jan Zwartendijk in June 1940. Olga herself sought contact with the now 91-year-old Weijland. 'What struck me so much about his story was that he was a very ordinary child, who could even look back on that terrible time with nostalgia. For example, he remembered his own amazement at the Japanese spring, with all those cherry blossoms. And the fun he had at a temporary school in Vilnius. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Marcel and his family ended up in a Japanese camp, and in 1946 he finally got on a boat to Sydney, where he has always stayed.
Photo: Left to right, Jan Zwartendijk’s son and daughter, Rob and Edith Zwartendijk, speaking with King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, at the memorial in Kaunas on June 15, 2018.
A moving encounter
Olga met more people who owed their lives, directly or indirectly, to Zwartendijk. For example, on a flight to Lithuania, where a monument to Zwartendijk was to be unveiled, she sat next to a woman who turned out to be the granddaughter of Abraham Liwer. She had just retired and had delved into her family history for the first time. And when Olga arrived in Kaunas, Jan Zwartendijk's children and Marcel Weijland, the man who as a child had marveled at the Japanese spring blossoms as a child, were there also. Olga: 'That meeting was so moving. He, representing all the survivors. And they, the children of the man who helped save them. They sat very close together, holding hands, and the deep gratitude was just palpable. It really gave me goosebumps, and I was completely overwhelmed. Everything revolved around them and the past that became tangible again for a very short time. That touched me very much.'
Photo: Opening of the Jan Zwartendijk exhibition at the Philips Museum in Eindhoven, September 17, 2018.
Exposition 'Visas to Freedom'
The meeting in Kaunas confirmed for Olga that the exhibition "Visas to Freedom" had to be created. The exhibition was on display at the Philips Museum from September 2018 through March 2023 and can still be viewed today at Hornemann Huis. 'With the exhibition, I wanted to bring the story close', said Olga. 'I am happy with the form in which we have presented it. Especially the testimonies of the survivors on the podcasts still touch me deeply. The great thing is that in 2022 in Eindhoven, an artwork made of light was unveiled, honoring Jan and all the resistance heroes. It remains a piece of Philips history. Naturally, it wasn’t Philips that saved those thousands of human lives, but Jan did go down in history as Mister Philips Radio. That he was so brave and selfless remains something to be proud of. We had to tell his story.' The "Visas to Ffreedom" exhibition consisted of a few pots of ink, a radio from the era, some original documents and letters and the Yad Vashem Righteous Among the Nations award Jan Zwartendijk received posthumously. The exhibit wasn't particularly large, but it conveyed the remarkable history of this courageous humanitarian and the people he saved from certain death. The stories of three survivors, captured in podcasts, also bring the history to life in moving ways.
Mini-lecture on Jan Zwartendijk
The Philips Museum has since developed a half-hour mini-lecture so that the story can continue to be told.
