The specific design on the city’s central Laisvės Avenue next to the consul’s interwar residence should be finalized by the Dutch Embassy and partners in the coming few days.
“The most logical opportunity was to commemorate this act of light where it actually happened and that is at the Laisvės Alėja. (…) We’d like to highlight – literally – this spot as something to remember,” Dutch Ambassador to Lithuania Bert van der Lingen told BNS.
The installation should be in place by June.
The monument should cost around 150,000 euros, with almost all of the funding already secured. Contributors to the project include the Dutch Foreign Ministry and Philips, as Zwartendijk’s employer.
Issued by Zwartendijk during World Wars I and II, the so-called Curacao visas allowed Japan’s consul to Kaunas Chiune Sugihara to issue Japanese transit visas that saved lives of a few thousand Jews.