rescuers of jews

In 1938, Jan Zwartendijk (1896-1976) became the representative of a Dutch enterprise “Philips Electronics” in Kaunas, Lithuania. On June 14, 1940 the Dutch Ambassador to the Baltic States, L. P. J. de Decker, who at that time was residing in the city of Riga in Latvia, appointed Jan Zwartendijk as Dutch Honorary Consul in Lithuania. On the following day, the Soviet Union army occupied Lithuania.
By the beginning of August 1940, when the Soviets closed the Dutch consulate, Zwartendijk had issued at least 2,345 “Curaçao visas