Holocaust hero inspires kids to write what’s right

Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul to Lithuania during World War II, saved thousands of Jews from death during the Holocaust -- and ended up unemployed and dishonored.

On Monday night, a collection of San Francisco high school students honored the memory of Sugihara by reading essays written for a contest called "Do The Right Thing."

The 13 students who read their work were finalists chosen from a field of 187 contestants. Earlier that evening, they were recognized at an awards ceremony at San Francisco's City Hall. A total of $5,000 was awarded to students who composed the winning entries and their teachers.

"This contest was really my window on the world to see what teenagers are going through," said Jessica Ravitz, the project coordinator for the Anti-Defamation League's Central Pacific Region office in San Francisco, which co-sponsored the event.

"I think what is so profoundly different about this contest is that the winners were selected only on the basis of how they dealt with issues of personal moral courage -- not whether they were great athletes, musicians or class valedictorians."

The contest, co-sponsored by the San Francisco Unified School District, was held locally for the first time last year. Similar contests have taken place in New York and Boston.

The idea for the contest was originated by New York resident Sylvia Smoller, who survived the Holocaust because of Sugihara's intervention.

Sugihara, who often worked from 8 a.m. until midnight while his wife massaged his hands, signed hundreds of visas every day for Jewish refugees, saving more than 6,000 lives.

Doing the right thing came at a high price for the Japanese diplomat, who besides receiving few accolades following the war, was stripped of his duties.

One year before his death in 1986, Sugihara was given Israel's highest honor and recognized as "Righteous Among Nations."

Smoller wanted to impart the lessons of moral fortitude to an audience of young people -- and hoped the story of Sugihara would serve as an inspiring example.

The toll exacted by standing up for what's right formed the crux of many of the essays, according to Ravitz. Among the many profound issues facing the students were situations involving racism, violence and homelessness.

The third-place winner of the contest, Kaki Jiaqi Chen of Balboa High School, wrote of walking through Chinatown, when she witnessed an elderly Latina woman who had fallen on a market floor. In her essay, Chen recalled that no one volunteered to help because the woman was not Chinese.

Chen was afraid to defy the people around the marketplace, but helped the woman up (and walked her home) because she remembered her role model -- Leifeng, a Chinese icon revered for his stances against bigotry.

Racism and violence permeate the essay of the contest's second-place winner, Emile Brock of George Washington High School. Brock worked as a bagger in a supermarket, where he was instructed to "teach shoplifters a lesson" by at times using violence -- and was given racial profiling criteria to apprehend them.

As an African-American male who grew up with violence, Brock found the tactics troubling. He wrote of risking his job by "refusing to chase shoplifters as if they were runaway slaves."

Thomas Stewart, a senior at Galileo High School, who has been homeless off and on for the past year, faced a moral dilemma when he recently spent the night at a homeless shelter.

Stewart, first-prize winner in the contest, recalled that it was nearing midnight on an icy cold winter night, when a staff member entered the shelter and insisted that the boys quiet down.

One boy continued laughing, prompting the employee to burst through the doors, demanding to know who the perpetrator was. No one stepped forward, and the room fell silent -- save for the muffled laughter of a different teenager.

At that point, according to Stewart, the staff member demanded that the teenager who had begun to laugh (and not the cause of the original problem) leave the shelter immediately. The young man protested, saying that he wasn't the culprit.

That didn't seem germane to the staffer, who insisted that if the original perpetrator didn't step forward, the innocent teenager would be tossed out on the street.

Knowing the chilling winds and perilous streets that they would be facing, no one stepped forward. At that point, Stewart decided to call the staffer on her actions.

"I appealed to her humanity," Stewart recalled in a phone interview. "I told her she knew we didn't have anywhere to go, or we wouldn't be in a shelter."

After about 10 minutes of heated arguments, the staffer relented, and walked away with tears in her eyes.

"The question is really about whether I'm my brother's keeper," Stewart said, adding that he would do the same thing again. "I didn't know this guy at all, but I don't think someone should be punished for a crime they didn't commit."