There were some interventions to rescue Jews. In the period 16 July – 3 August 1940 the Dutch Honorary Consul Jan Zwartendijk in Kaunas provided over 2,200 Jews with an official third destination to Curaçao, a Caribbean island and Dutch colony that required no entry visa, or Surinam (which, upon independence in 1975, became Suriname). There was also a Japanese government official, Chiune Sugihara, who served as vice consul for the Japanese Empire, also in Kaunas, Lithuania. During the Second World War, Sugihara helped some six thousand Jews flee Europe by issuing transit visas to them so that they could travel through Japanese territory, risking his job and his family's lives. The fleeing Jews were refugees from German-occupied Western Poland and Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland, as well as residents of Lithuania.