Jan Zwartendijk (29 July 1896 – 14 September 1976) was a Dutch businessman and diplomat. As director of the Philips factories in Lithuania and part-time acting consul of the Dutch government-in-exile, he supervised the writing of 2,345 visas for Curaçao to save Jews from the Holocaust during World War II. In 1997, Yad Vashem recognised him as Righteous Among the Nations. Early life Zwartendijk was born in Rotterdam. World War II In 1939, he was named director of the Lithuanian branch of production of Philips. When the Soviet Union took over Lithuania in 1940, some Jewish Dutch residents in Lithuania approached Zwartendijk to get a visa to the Dutch Indies. With Zwartendijk's superior, Ambassador to Latvia L. P. J. de Decker's permission, he agreed to help them. The word spread and Jews who had fled from German-occupied Poland also sought his assistance. Ambassador De Dekker had been encouraged by a Jewish applicant to write a declaration on her visa stating that entering Curaçao and Dependencies in the West Indies did not require a visa, while omitting the part about the permission of the Governor of Curaçao being required. Told of this, Zwartendijk followed suit and in a few days, with the help of aides, produced over 2,000 visas for Jews to Curaçao. Refugees also approached Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese consul, who gave them a transit visa through Japan, against the disapproval of his government. This gave many refugees an opportunity to leave Lithuania for the Far East via the Trans-Siberian railway. In the three weeks after 16 July 1940, Zwartendijk wrote 2,345 de facto visas to Curaçao and some of the Jews copied more. Many who helped only knew him as "Mr Philips Radio". When the Soviet Union annexed Lithuania, they closed down his Philips office and the embassies and consulates in Kaunas on 3 August 1940. He returned to the occupied Netherlands to work in the Philips headquarters in Eindhoven until his retirement, and did not talk about the matter. Zwartendijk died in Eindhoven in 1976. Awards In 1996, Boys Town Jerusalem, an orphanage and vocational training school in Jerusalem, honoured Zwartendijk at a tribute dinner in New York City and announced the establishment of the Jan Zwartendijk Award for Humanitarian Ethics and Values. The award has since been bestowed on other Holocaust-era saviors, including President Manuel Luis Quezon and the people of the Republic of the Philippines. In