During World War II, my future father-in-law, Szaul Becher, was a young rabbinic student at the Mir Yeshiva in Vilna, Lithuania. As the war escalated, the situation in Lithuania became life threatening for Jews. Over 300 students escaped Europe and daringly made their way to Japanese controlled Shanghai, China, due to the heroic efforts of Sempo Sugihara, the Japanese consul to Lithuania. Sugihara issued transport visas to these students and to many other Jews, despite repeated instructions from the Japanese Foreign Ministry to cease his activities. Following an arduous journey across war-jtorn Russia, the students arrived in Kobe, Japan were they lived under impoverished and dangerous conditions for a year. In 1941, the students were again forced to leave and spent the remaining years of war in the Jewish Ghetto in Shanghai , China. Following the war, Szaul came to the United States where he worked for an organization that aided recent war refugees arriving at Ellis Island in New York. It was there that he met my future mother-in-law, a survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen concentration camps. They married within the year. This currency is a reminder of the miraculous survival of our patriarch, Rabbi Szaul Becher. Submitted by Ronnie Becher

– ronnie becher

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