By Rabbi Mendel Rubin
In downtown Albany, across from the Federal Building and Park on North Pearl Street, and just down the street on Clinton Ave from the Palace Theater, and just across Broadway from the entrance to the Skyway linear park – there’s a small city park called “Wallenberg Park” dedicated in memory of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg who saved many Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust and then disappeared without a trace afteized together! The Albany historian she contacted then contacted me.
Let me explain some of the background to these two men, the Japanese and the Dutch diplomats, and why it is so personally significant to both my wife Raizy and I, and that this dual recognition happen to be in Albany NY!!
Sugihara is better known for the thousands of transit visas he issued to Jews escaping the Holocaust, most of whom spent the war years in Shanghai, saving their lives (including both my paternal grandfather R’ Moshe Rubin, and Raizy’s maternal grandfather R’ Shmuel Tzvi Fuchs, among thousands of others).
Much less is known about Jan Zwartendijk the Dutch diplomat in the same Kovno/Kanaus who started the whole exit visa process and secured the island of Curacao as a fictional but legal end point to the visa’s travel.
Interesting as to who locally knew of all this and invested all the effort to make this public recognition happen?? That’s what the Holland woman wants to know, and now so do we!
Hope to find out more about this! Stay tuned for more on this local history mystery!
