This Japanese man saved 6,000 Jews from Hitler—and he was dismissed from diplomatic service for it!

Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese consul during WWII. While serving in Lithuania, he found himself caught in the midst of Jewish refugees who had fled Poland after the Nazi invasion of that country in 1939. Not long afterward, in June of 1940, the Soviet Union invaded Lithuania.

The surrounding warfare put Jews in that part of Europe in a desperate situation. They had no place to escape. After having heard about the plight of the Jews, Sugihara decided to act.

His plan was to grant them Japanese visas in order to bring the refugees eastward—their only hope. However, Sugihara didn't have the authority to do so and, after writing three times for permission from the Japanese government, he was denied as many times. Something had to be done.

Sugihara and his wife, after much contemplation about what was right, decided to personally write and sign the visas by hand! It was an immense and very painstaking task, but it led to 6,000 lives being saved.

Tragically, he was let go from his position in 1945. Following the major setback, he struggled to regain full-time work. For a "righteous gentile," as he has been deemed, it hardly seems an appropriate end.

(Source)