Jan Zwartendijk

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Jan Zwartendijk (1899-1979) was a Dutch businessman and diplomat who helped Jews escape Lithuania during World War II.

Zwartendijk directed the Philips plants in Lithuania. On June 19, 1940 he also took a part-time duty as an acting consul of the Netherlands - or, to be exact, of the Dutch government-in-exile. His superior was a Dutch ambassador to Latvia, de Decker.

When the Soviet Union took over Lithuania in 1940, some Jewish Dutch residents in Lithuania approached Zwartendijk to get a visa to the Dutch Indies. With de Decker's permission, Zwartendijk agreed to help them. The word spread and Jews who had fled from Poland also asked for Zwartendijk's help.

In defiance of the official diplomatic niceties, Zwartendijk signed a declaration that entering Curaçao in the West Indies did not require a visa, while omitting the second part of the standard notice that entry required the permission of the Curaçao governor. (In fact, the first visas of this kind were issued by de Decker himself, earlier, and Jews approached Zwartendijk after news of this unusual possibility had spread.)

Then refugees approached Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese consul, who gave them a transit visa through Japan, also against official diplomatic rules. This gave many refugees an opportunity to leave Lithuania through the Trans-Siberian railway to the Far East.

In the following three weeks after July 26, Zwartendijk wrote up over 2400 de facto visas to Curaçao and some of the Jews copied more. Many who helped only knew him as "Mr Philips Radio". When the Soviets closed down his Philips office on August 3, he returned to the occupied Netherlands to work in the Philips headquarters in Eindhoven. He did not talk about the matter.

Jan Zwartendijk died in 1979.

Yad Vashem memorial recognized Zwartendijk in 1997 with the title "Righteous Among the Nations".