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 after being arrested by the Russians.
There are many monuments and plaques and dedications to Raoul Wallenberg in many cities around the world. He is one of the most recognized righteous gentiles of the Holocaust. The dedication of Wallenberg Park in Albany took place in mid-1980’s under the Albany Mayor Thomas Whalen administration.
A woman from Holland reached out to a local historian to find out more about two other plaques placed alongside the Wallenberg stone in the center of the park. Two other men, aside for Raoul Wallenberg, both righteous gentiles, are also recognized with plaques in the same park in downtown Albany, one across the other. These two men worked tirelessly to save thousands of lives by issuing transit/exit visas that enabled Jewish refugees to flee the Holocaust and spend the war years in Shanghai China.
This woman from Holland is most interested to find out who placed the Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara & Dutch diplomat Jan Zwartendijk plaques right across from each other in Wallenberg Park in 1997? This may be the only place in the world (as far as she knows) where both are recognized together! The Albany historian she contacted then contacted me (Mendel).
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 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 Mendel’s paternal grandfather R’ Moshe Rubin, and Raizy’s maternal grandfather R’ Shmuel Tzvi Fuchs, among thousands of others) but 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!