CNN International Diplomatic Linense

UN Exhibit - "The Righteous Diplomats"

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RICHARD ROTH, DIPLOMATIC LICENSE: You've heard of Oskar Schindler, whose list saved hundreds of lives from the Nazis. There were other heroes who did not have a movie made in tribute and, believe it or not, they were diplomats - a profession not associated with risk-taking. Today, our show really lives up to its title. DIPLOMATIC LICENSE is next.

There are people alive today because unsung diplomats risked their lives to help thousands escape their homelands and avoid the gas chambers in Europe during World War II. For the first time, the United Nations is giving these incredible public servants, many of whom have passed on, some long overdue attention. Survivors looked at photos of the individuals who saved them in an exhibit called "Visas For Life: The Righteous Diplomats."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ERIC SAUL, CURATOR, "VISAS FOR LIFE: THE RIGHTEOUS DIPLOMATS": We know about Hitler. We know about him. We know about the monsters that killed millions, but we don't know about the heroes. And now, we're discovering that were many, many more rescuers of Jews than we knew. We estimate that about 300,000 Jews got illegal visas from more than 80 men and women and that these men and women have never been recognized. We also estimate that there may be as many as 500,000 - a half a million descendants.

JOHN PAUL ABRANCHES, PORTUGUESE DIPLOMAT'S SON: That was my father, and I'm very proud to be one of his sons. My father did what he did because, as he said, "I'd rather be with God against man than with man against God." And that meant that the instructions that he had were immoral, inhumane, and he would not comply with them.

ZALMAN MUSHOVSKI (ph): Good morning. My name is Zalman Mushovski (ph). I received a visa from Chiune Sugihara in Kovno in the summer of 1940. And that's why I survived. Thank you.

ENRICO MANDEL-MANTELLO, SALVADORAN DIPLOMAT'S SON: For me, there's no satisfaction greater for my father - I wish he were here - than seeing this lady walk up to me and say - show you a document - "Look, my mother and I were saved by this." So I think that's very important lesson to humanity.

KATHARINA POLAK, VISA RECIPIENT: I didn't know about his document until after my mother died in 1980, and I found it among my father's papers. I never knew we were saved by this.

SYLVAIN BROMBERGER, VISA RECIPIENT: I think it's extremely important. I think we grieve the people who were killed and murdered. And we must grieve them, and we damn the people who did it. And they should be damned. But we forget the people who actually had the courage under those circumstances to save others. And those are the people that we must remember because if there's anybody to emulate in that whole horrible story, it's those people.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The moral of the story is that one person can make a difference. One person with a rubber stamp and a pen and a piece of paper could save a human life.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROTH: We have a living witness to diplomatic courage right here, right now, with me in the studio - is Masha Leon - lives in New York City, but quite a perilous journey just to get there.

OK, let's set the scene. It's Warsaw. The ghetto is nearing - nearing - what is the scene? You're under the gun, literally.

MASHA LEON, ESCAPED HOLOCAUST WITH VISA: 1939-1940, we fled Nazi- occupied Warsaw and were heading eastward toward my parents' hometown, which was on the Russian side of Poland because of the Hitler-Stalin pact. Our driver takes us straight to the Gestapo headquarters. We're lined up to be shot. And fortunately, my mother and I had even number tags, and they only shot the odd numbers.

We were heading eastward with thousands of refugees at the crossing, the no-man's land. The Germans let us through. The Russians wouldn't let us in, and thousands of people were dying on the neutral pass, a no-man's land. And this Polish woman, whose fields were on the Russian side, whose house was on the German side hid us in a wagon, took us past German patrols, hid us in her house at her own risk. And when my mother offered to pay her, said - refused payment saying, "It's my Christian duty."

ROTH: All right. So you've already had some good luck along the way. Still, an amazing story, already, no matter what's ahead. But you escaped because you had a certain number - not odd versus odd or even. Did you know the people who were shot?

LEON: No. They were - the peasant who was taking us just picked up people along the way. We don't know who these people were. Not relatives.

ROTH: OK. You were 8 years old. You remember all of this?

LEON: Absolutely, as if it were yesterday.

ROTH: OK. What happened as you went towards Lithuania? You get there.

LEON: As we crossed just a detour, another life-saving moment - we were about to be shot by a Russian as we got to the Russian side, and my mother spoke fluent Russian and she called me Masha, which is a Russian name, Russian for Mary, and he had a sister named Masha. He said, "If I shoot you, it's like shooting my sister." Took us to the commandateur, who put us on a military truck, took us to the train station.

We ended up in my parents' hometown. My father, who had left before us, joined us, and we headed for Vilnius, Lithuania, which was then under Lithuanian independent rule. The Russians invaded in 1940 - in June 1940. In August, my father was arrested by NKBD. He was a journalist, an anti-Communist, and ended up in the same prison cell as Menachim Begin, which is another long story. At that point, my mother was traveling between Vilnius and Kaunas. She'd heard about the visas from the Japanese consul. Got the visa, and in February of 1941, we left Vilnius.

ROTH: I mean, this is - you owe your life, then, to which diplomat. Who was your savior who you never met?

LEON: No, my mother did, but I did not. His name is Chiune Sugihara, and most of us did not know of his heroism until long after we were alive.

ROTH: He was an official in the Japanese mission there?

LEON: Right. He was a consul general. He spoke fluent Russian, and he was an unusual individual who, against orders from his superiors, issued handwritten visas for 2,139 - actually, visas for 6,000 people, and there are now about 50,000 of us descendants as a result of that.

ROTH: You went back to Japan several years ago to honor this man.

LEON: Yes.

ROTH: He had already passed away, right?

LEON: Yes, in 1994, there was a special mission to his hometown in Yaotsu (INAUDIBLE) Prefecture outside of Tokyo. And I traveled with Yukiko, his widow, and his son, Hiro, whom I had interviewed when I'd met in 1987 in New York. And that's how I found out.

Because the assumption was that if a consulate gives you a visa, it is with the consulate and the government's blessing. And it wasn't until the whole story came out in '86 that we realized that he had done this on his own.

ROTH: What was the risk to these diplomats?

LEON: Well, imagine an American diplomat telling Washington, I'm going to issue visas to Rwandans or Haitians, and Washington says no. And he says yes. How long would he be a diplomat? They would not accept this. It just would not happen.

ROTH: What do you think watching the film, "Schindler's List," or hearing all the hubbub about it, while these other people didn't receive any notoriety and, in effect, did not do it for money?

LEON: Well, as Ambassador Mondale, who spoke to us in Japan, said, Sugihara did this from the get-go. He did it with no personal gain. Oskar Schindler, although he saved those people, originally was a profiteer, did use these people, the Jews as laborers. But Sugihara had nothing to gain and never gained - and didn't know until 1969 that anyone had survived. Even when he was at the train station after the consulate had been closed down, he was writing these handwritten visas and throwing them out of the train window. It's an extraordinary act. And it's extraordinary heroism. But he was an extraordinary man.

ROTH: A lot of these other diplomats died destitute, stripped of their ranks by their own government despite their acts.

LEON: Absolutely astonishing - absolutely. To sabotage a career, to put your family and your children at risk and to face dishonor and humiliation, plus, destitution is unthinkable. Is really remarkable.

ROTH: So you escaped. How would you describe that? Was that fate, luck? How do you describe your life?

LEON: Chance, luck and really human - individual human courage. This, to me, is the most incomprehensible essence. There is a professor in (INAUDIBLE) who wrote a book called, "When Light Pierced the Darkness." She was hidden during the war and wanted to find out what is the common denominator among people who risked their lives to save others. And what she found was one common thread.

Usually, they were an outsider. Usually, it was somebody who was a Protestant in a Catholic community, a Catholic in a Protestant community, an artist, an oddball person. And the other thing is a very strong moral basic education, a feeling that you owe it to humanity. Whether you like them or not, you owe them life. You owe them to rescue them.

ROTH: OK, Masha Leon, a survivor through diplomatic initiative and courage, thank you very much for coming here into our studio. You're living here in New York City, and you continue to write about your exploits and surviving, and you're now in the publishing business. Thank you.

LEON: Thank you.

ROTH: You can see the "Visas for Life" display in the UN headquarters lobby in New York through the month of April. At a formal evening ceremony for the exhibit, a man who didn't get a visa, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, praised the deeds of the diplomats but questioned why other envoys could not emulate them.

One diplomat widely known for his visa efforts is Raul Wallenberg, a Swedish official working in Budapest. Raul Wallenberg has a link to the UN, the organization founded in the ashes of World War II. His niece is Nane Annan, the wife of the UN secretary-general.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANE ANNAN: Who was Raul? My mother was his little sister, and she adored him. She said he was fun loving with a great sense of humor. She said he loved to act and that he was not a macho man, but rather an anti-hero. For me, that is important to hear that Raul was a human being and not a super-human being because I think it is in that way that we can relate to him and draw lessons.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD HOLBROOKE, U.S. AMB. TO UN: He is a bad man. I know him very well. He's a thug. He's a war criminal. He's a racist and a separatist who's been trying to undermine the Dayton agreements, even though he signed them in Dayton in 1995, ever since they were passed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH (voice-over): The U.S. ambassador to the UN giving his opinion of the most senior Bosnian Serb official arrested so far and brought to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. Momcilo Krajisnik pleaded "not guilty" on Friday to charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

(on camera): What does this arrest mean? Insight and perspective from Afsane Bassir Pour of Le Monde, and at the United Nations, Times of London correspondent, James Bone. Afsane, Ambassador Holbrooke says the handwriting is on the wall for Radovan Karadzic, who is a wanted UN war crimes suspect - worked closely with Momcilo Krajisnik. What do you think?

AFSANE BASSIR POUR, LE MONDE: Well, one can hope so. I mean, there's absolutely more hope now than there was a few months ago. And then we hear that Karadzic, the political leader of the Bosnia Serbs, is in deep hiding now, in fact. Until a few months ago, he could still be seen. The other man, the other big fish in this war, was the military leader, Ratko Miladic, and he's living in Belgrade and openly. He was seen at a football match, at a wedding.

ROTH: Yeah, he was at a football match. James, what's your take on this?

JAMES BONE, TIMES OF LONDON: Well, I think the most interesting thing about the arrest was that it took place in the French sector of Bosnia. I mean, the French troops have been the most reluctant of all the peacekeeping troops to actually go out and make arrests of wanted war criminals. And their sector was seen as something of a haven for people like Karadzic and Krajisnik. So the fact that he was arrested in the French sector obviously sends a warning to Karadzic that that's not a safe haven anymore.

ROTH: And that came a few weeks after the French troops were criticized for inaction in Mitrovica. Afsane?

BASSIR POUR: And it's absolutely true what James says. Louise Arbour, the ex-prosecutor of the tribunal, came to Paris a few months ago, and she had a press conference openly saying that the French have created a safe haven. Now, the change came about apparently after a recent meeting with President Jacques Chirac and the new prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, in Paris.

And apparently, after Chirac emerged from that meeting, things changed. And at 3:17 in the morning of the night of the arrest, French special forces in black masks stormed the house of the parents of Krajisnik and dragged him out barefoot and in his pajamas. So that is a big change, indeed. That's why there's more hope that we may see more of these arrests.

BONE: I mean, ever since Francois Mitterrand was president of France, the French have hewn to a more pro-Serb line, one might say, than any of the other major powers involved, although Britain, at times, has veered close.

There was a very strange story recently in France, where a legal adviser serving French forces in Kosovo was apparently leaking information to the French press - French satirical magazine "Le Canard Enchane" in which he was saying that the French military were pro-Serb and believe Bernard Kouchner, who is the chief of UNMIK (ph) - administrator - was anti-Serb and pro-Kosovo. And he ended up in a fistfight with a bunch of French military intelligence people in the streets of Paris.

ROTH: All right. Well, speaking of fistfights, maybe I'll switch gears. Let's talk about Iraq first, since the two of you have gone at it in other weeks, and some people have called me and say they enjoy it. But let's - and we all went out for dinner this week, so I think.

BONE: You're just an adjunct provocateur, Richard.

ROTH: Yeah, I think there are cooler heads, now. Iraq - a lot of different elements here. Hans Blix, the new weapons chief, if they ever get the inspectors back into Baghdad and other parts, came up with an organization plan presented to Security Council members. Blix, next Thursday, is going to go before the council.

BASSIR POUR: That's his.

ROTH: What does it all mean? Is there like a big pie chart of who's doing what? What's the political implication?

BASSIR POUR: Well, you touched, actually, on the heart of the matter, which is these inspectors - will they ever get back into Iraq? Now, the council was counting on Russia, especially, but France and China, also, to persuade Baghdad to accept these inspectors who have not been there since December of '98. Now, this hasn't been done. The Russians are saying, "We're not going to do anything to exert any influence on Baghdad."

ROTH: Did they like the Blix report?

BASSIR POUR: Well, let me finish this thought. They say that we can't ask Baghdad to accept the inspectors until and unless the British and the Americans stop their daily bombing of Iraq in the no-fly zone.

Did they like the report? They liked some of it. The Russian ambassador thinks that Hans Blix is trying to keep too many of the inspectors at work with UNSCOM. He would rather see a whole fresh, new recruitment.

BONE: Actually, on that point, Afsane, I'm told that about 30 percent of the existing staff of UNSCOM are expected to stay on, which is actually a much higher proportion than we expected at one time. Also, it's clear that there isn't going to be a person called a deputy, so the Americans can't have their traditional post as deputy, as it was in UNSCOM.

But there are some rather powerful posts around that could easily be mistaken for deputy. There's one called the activity of valuation officer, who is basically going to oversee the entire operations of the new body, UNMOVIC, and that could easily be something the Americans will be happy with.

ROTH: All right. Also, the U.S. Navy in the Gulf stopped a Russian ship, and the Iranians seem to be getting more aggressive again after the vice admiral or the admiral in charge of the coordinating stop enforcement effort there, Admiral Moore told the Security Council two weeks ago - we talked about it on our show - that Iran needs some encouragement to get tough.

But let's move on. Elsewhere in the Middle East, Lebanon, very briefly. Here comes a looming situation that we know is coming in the summertime, Israel saying it's going to pull out of southern Lebanon, and the UN is getting involved. James?

BONE: Well, I mean, of course, there's a UN force on the border, UNIFIL, at the moment. Probably, it's going to be expanded from around 4,000 to 10,000 men, trying to fill a vacuum left by the departing Israeli troops. But what happens to the Israeli's proxies, the South Lebanese Army, when the Israelis pull back is still very unclear.

ROTH: Well, Secretary-General Annan met with the Israeli foreign minister in Geneva, and there will be continuing dialog, right? The Israelis are up front.

BASSIR POUR: Yeah. Actually, the UN is very worried about this. I mean, there's nothing they can do. They have to get involved, but they're very worried because, for example, the Lebanese are now saying the UN should disarm the Palestinians. You know, they're about, what, 40,000-50,000 Palestinians, most of them armed. And the UN doesn't want to get into the business of disarming anybody. So there's lots of things to be solved. But there's a real, real worry within the UN about the prospects of this particular operation.

ROTH: And the focus will be on resolutions from the Security Council 425-426, which dealt with the pullout back in the late `70s. Both of our guests will stay on, hopefully. The mayor of New York City, who everybody here lives under, is in a political contest for the United States Senate with the first lady of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is an advocate of the United Nations.

While recently, the mayor has not been so enthusiastic, unlike Ms. Clinton, during the diplomatic license plate war, you may remember a few years ago, Mayor Guiliani said, "If they'd like to leave New York over parking tickets, we can find another use for that area of town." He also said sports teams were a bigger draw than the UN. The mayor was preaching a different tune last Monday night, speaking inside the United Nations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUDY GIULIANI, NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: Our city is a living, breathing symbol of the mission of the United Nations because no other city is dedicated to the principle that all of the people of the world can live along side of each other in peace, prosperity and mutual respect if they reaffirm their common humanity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROTH (voice-over): Cuba has been in the news lately. Something about a little boy? I don't know. So we thought we'd kick back with the band the Buena Vista Social Club, a group of 70-, 80- and 90-year- old Cuban musicians, who've just found international success.

(on camera): They performed at the UN last October, which is almost as long, it seems, as the Elian Gonzalez political issue has been tossed around. Secretary-General Annan, in fact, this week said the boy should go and be with his father. And Annan is going to Cuba shortly after you see this program.

Afsane, before he left, Kofi Annan looked to the millennium. There's a big summit with hundreds of world leaders coming in September. He issued a millennium report. What's it all about?

BASSIR POUR: Well, you know, he said that he didn't want the millennium to be an accident of the calendar, and he wanted to do more about this change. Now, in his report, the most interesting part for me was the partnership with the private sector.

He had four initiatives, three of which involve partnership with some big companies. And this is very new. If you remember, Boutros- Ghali, his predecessor, tried to involve the private sector in the UN, not just for the money, but for help in solving - in doing whatever the UN is doing in the political, military or development. And he was promptly cut down by Washington.

This time, Annan didn't even consult the member states. He just came out with these proposals, and so far, everybody but Cuba has accepted.

ROTH: It looks like they.

BASSIR POUR: Cuba says no private sector for the UN.

ROTH: It looks like they need a leader. By the way, you may have been hearing the end of our show music. We weren't trying to rush you there. And if we weren't, James Bone, your take on the millennium?

BONE: Well, first of all, I want to just point out that the 50th anniversary of the UN five years ago was - or six years ago, was heavily sponsored by private sector, particularly South Korean conglomerate, so there is some kind of precedent.

I think the most interesting thing for me is the way that Kofi Annan tried to embrace the Internet and the information age in some of his initiatives, setting up a UN information technology volunteer corps, for instance, in which volunteers would spread knowledge about technology to less developed countries and setting up information exchanges on health care and that kind of thing. I think that the Internet is one of the very positive things about globalization is something the UN was rather slow to embrace. But I'm glad to see he's doing it now.

ROTH: OK. James Bone, thank you. Afsane Bassir Pour, as always, maybe we'll have dinner again - all of us - soon again.

That is DIPLOMATIC LICENSE. Happy Birthday to UN Secretary- General, Kofi Annan. He's 62 this weekend, celebrating in Florence. E- mail us or him at diplomatic.license@turner.com.

For all of you and those watching in Hanover, Germany, to the hills of Hollywood, stay tuned for the latest U.S.-Cuba news - and we're hearing music - and the latest on sports.

END

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