Holocaust Hero. Dutch consul In Kaunas, Lithuania. Called "The Dutch Schindler, "The Guardian of Salvation," "The Angel of Curacao," and "Mr. Phillips Radio." Zwartendijk was a Dutch businessman at the Philips Company, which made lightbulbs and radios. He was sent to Kaunas, Lithuania to head the Philips company branch there. Because of his exemplary reputation, the Dutch government asked him to take the unpaid position of consul in Kaunas. In June 1940, the Soviet army invaded Lithuania. Afraid of persecution, Jewish refugees who fled to Lithuania looked for a way out of the country. After he was approached by a few refugees, Zwartendijk created a secret plan to help them escape Europe. He decided he could help them out of Lithuania by giving them passage to the Dutch Caribbean Island of Curaçao, about 5600 miles away. To do this, he wrote on their passports that no travel document was required to travel to Curaçao, although the governor's permission was in fact needed. No one checked on this requirement. The Curaçao visas allowed the refugees to petition Soviet authorities for transit papers. They were also able to take the visas to Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara. Sugihara then cleared the way for the refugees to escape Europe by traveling to Vladivostok, a port city in Russia, via the Trans-Siberian Railway, and from there, by boat to Japan. From Japan, they could travel freely to the west. From July 26 to August 2, 1940, Zwartendijk created at least 2,345 visas. Researchers estimate that the work of the two men allowed somewhere between 6,000 to 10,000 Jews to escape the Nazis, because visas were usually issued to men who also brought their wives and children with them. Researchers also later determined that 95% of the refugees with Zwartendijk's visas survived the war. The city of Kaunas has honored him with a memorial in front of the Philips office, which was unveiled by King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands and President Dalia Grybauskaitė of Lithuania. More than 2,100 passports are suspended between two trees at the location and at night they light up an array of blue, pink and green. In 1996, Boys Town Jerusalem, an orphanage and vocational training school in Jerusalem, honored Zwartendijk at a tribute dinner in New York City and announced the establishment of the Jan Zwartendijk Award for Humanitarian Ethics and Values, an award which has since been bestowed on other Holocaust-era saviors, including President Manuel Luis Quezon and the people of the Republic of the Philippines. In 1997, Yad Vashem bestowed the title Righteous Among the Nations on Zwartendijk, the greatest award that a non-Jew can be given by the State of Israel. On 10 September 2012, he was awarded with the Life Saving Cross of the Republic of Lithuania, a decoration to award the persons who, despite danger to their lives, attempted to save lives.