The Holocaust, which occurred during World War Two in Nazi Germany, was a harrowing time for millions of Jews and other victims. The summaries of the events that occurred during this time are saddening, but hearing about the experiences of Holocaust victims makes the situation far more distressing. The experiences of Andrew Glass and Mara Ginic put the tragedy of the Holocaust into perspective. Andrew’s father, Marion Glass, was drafted into the Polish army, where he worked as a Roman Catholic taxi driver. The taxi driver knew where to acquire black-market gas, so the Glass family and the taxi driver’s family fled from Warsaw, Poland, in 1939. The families hired a horse-drawn carriage once the taxi ran out of gas and traveled on back roads…show more content… Marion Glass then met with the Japanese vice-counsel in Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara, where he received three Japanese travel visas. From there, the Glass family had to obtain documents that would allow them to enter and leave the Soviet Union, which was extremely challenging. Andrew’s father had to complete an interview with the NKVD, or the Soviet secret police force. The interview took place at three in the morning, and although his father was told that he was “an enemy to the people,” he still obtained the three visas they needed and overcame having to pay for the visas with “hard currency.” With all visas in hand, the Glass family left the Soviet Union and sailed to Japan, where they faced their next challenge: making it to the United States. The US ambassador in Tokyo, Joseph Grew, issued one-week transit visas to the US after Curacao stopped accepting non-Dutch refugees. The family sailed across the Pacific on the Kamakuru Maru and landed in San Francisco. The family originally planned to travel to the Caribbean, but Andrew’s parents decided to stay in the US due to violent German
