Liwer Chawa

Liwer Chawa received transit visa no. 1025 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 3 August 1940. Aged 48 in 1940.

Documents

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

48

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife of #1026, child Jochewet (19)

The journey

Reached Japan; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for Canada.

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Jochewet — child, aged 18

The register recorded visa holders. It did not reliably record the wives and children who travelled on somebody else’s visa, so these people have no entry of their own and cannot be searched for. Where the archive has recovered a name, it is here.

What is known

Chawa Heller was born in Szydłowiec, Poland, on 1 November 1891. Because her birth was not registered until two years later, her date of birth was afterwards recorded wrongly. She had four sisters and three brothers, most of whom did not survive the war. Her marriage to Abraham Liwer was arranged, but the couple met in secret before the wedding; defying Orthodox tradition, she neither shaved her head nor wore a wig. After marrying she moved to Abraham's home town of Będzin. On 2 September 1939 she fled Będzin with her husband Abraham and their daughter Jadzia. Her son Jacob was studying in Belgium. Her granddaughter Arlette Liwer, who has written the family's account for this archive, tel…

Where this comes from

• The Kobe relatives list — refugees at Kobe in 1941 recorded with their relatives abroad. Seventy-six pages in numbered sheets (LIST No. 7, No. 16 and others), each line giving a name, age, birthplace, occupation and citizenship, and then…
  Entry 86 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: aged 48.
• David Rosen, 'Lithuania to Moscow to Yokohama to Seattle: Holocaust Escape via Japan', Mass-Pocha (Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston), October 2022, pp. 17-21. Reproduces the United States arrival manifest of the M.S. Hie Mar…
  The article in which this manifest reaches the archive. David Rosen read the Liwer family's lines out of the original sheet himself - Chawa's and her daughter's among them - and he sent the article to the archive in August 2026. The questions it answers are Arlette Liwer-Stuip's, whose research prompted it. What the manifest itself records is set out below, under the sheet.
• M.S. Hie Maru, Yokohama 26 June - Seattle 7 July 1941, continuing to Vancouver: the ship's last commercial crossing before she was taken for the Japanese Navy. Read from the manifest reproduced in David Rosen's Mass-Pocha article of Octo…
  Lines 10 and 11 of the same sheet, and the reason this family is on two different pages of the archive. Chawa Liver, 48, and her daughter Jochewet, 18, a student - both Polish citizens, both marked 'Det'. They were detained aboard rather than landed, along with every other passenger on that page but one, and then continued to Vancouver: they held Canadian visas and he did not. Column 13 records passports issued at KOBE on 20 February 1941. Those were Polish passports obtained through Ambassador Tadeusz Romer, together with the Canadian visas, and mother and daughter shared a single joint passport because the Polish embassy in Japan had run out of blank forms. The sheet is stamped SEATTLE, WASH. JUL 7 1941 and certified the following day by Immigrant Inspector Albert Wolstenholme. The compiled register's note that this line went to Canada while No. 1026 went to the United States is exactly right, and this is the document that shows why.
• List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States - M.S. Hie Maru, which sailed from Kobe on 23 June and from Yokohama on 26 June 1941 and reached Seattle on 7 July 1941; list 19, the sheet stamped 34251/24, sailing from Yokoham…
  Line 10 of the sheet. LIWER, CHAWA, 48, female, married; reads Polish and German and writes; Polish nationality, Hebrew; born at Będzin, last permanent residence Będzin; no United States visa in the visa column. The register has her as Liwer Chawa, 48, wife of No. 1026, going to Canada. The surname is spelt exactly as the register carries it, the given name is the same, the age is the same to the year, and the destination agrees: the ship went on from Seattle to Vancouver, and the inspectors' notes at the foot of the sheet record that she was detained on board at Seattle on 7 July 1941 and that her departure for a foreign port was witnessed the next day. The register's 'Canada' for her and 'USA' for her husband were compiled from a source that had nothing to do with this manifest, and both are what the manifest shows.
• List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States - M.S. Hie Maru, which sailed from Kobe on 23 June and from Yokohama on 26 June 1941 and reached Seattle on 7 July 1941; list 19, the sheet stamped 34251/24, sailing from Yokoham…
  Line 11, immediately below her mother. LIWER, JOCHEWET, 18, female, single, student; Polish nationality, Hebrew; born in Poland, last permanent residence Będzin; detained on board with her mother and her departure for a foreign port witnessed the next day. The register names her: the entry for No. 1025 records a child, Jochewet, aged 19, which was her age in August 1940. The 18 on this manifest is the age her father gave for her, not her age: she was twenty, born on 4 December 1920 (Chawa's granddaughter Arlette Liwer, 14 September 2026).
• Arlette Liwer-Stuip, account written for this archive of her grandfather ABRAM (AVRAM) LIWER, register No. 1026, and his wife CHAWA, No. 1025 — the flight from Będzin, the crossing into Lithuania, the Curaçao declaration from Jan Zwarten…
  Her granddaughter's written account of the flight from Będzin, the Curaçao declaration and the Sugihara visas, the deportation to Siberia, and the reunion in New York. Given by Arlette Liwer.
• stuip-2026-08-04: The Liwers for Chaim's site — a document sent to the archive by a correspondent. Abraham Liwer, born in Będzin, Poland, 1892. On Chiune Sugihara’s official list – No. 1026 Also known as / spellings: Abram Liver Polish .…
  Her granddaughter's written account of the flight from Będzin, the Curaçao declaration and the Sugihara visas, the deportation to Siberia, and the reunion in New York. Given by Arlette Liwer.
• David Rosen, 'Lithuania to Moscow to Yokohama to Seattle: Holocaust Escape via Japan', Mass-Pocha (Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston), October 2022, page 17 — the article as printed, the first of five pages. It opens with the…
  All five printed pages of the article reconstructing this family's crossing, given by its author David Rosen.
• David Rosen, 'Lithuania to Moscow to Yokohama to Seattle', Mass-Pocha, October 2022, page 18 — the second printed page, and the one that reproduces the United States arrival manifest of the Hie Maru at Seattle. Two strips of the manifest…
  All five printed pages of the article reconstructing this family's crossing, given by its author David Rosen.
• David Rosen, 'Lithuania to Moscow to Yokohama to Seattle', Mass-Pocha, October 2022, page 20 — the fourth printed page, on tracing the two women's onward crossing from Canada back into the United States. It sets out the two collections o…
  Amended 21 September 2026: until this date this page let the 1943 border-crossing record's 'born 1924 at Bedzin' stand as Jochewet Liwer's date and place of birth, and read the age of 18 on the Hie Maru manifest as her age. She was born on 4 December 1920 at Szydłowiec, where her mother went home to give birth; the ages on both records are the ages that were given for her, not her age. Chawa's granddaughter Arlette Liwer, 14 September 2026. | All five printed pages of the article reconstructing this family's crossing, given by its author David Rosen.
• "Washington, King, Seattle, Passenger Lists, 1890-1957", FamilySearch — index entry for Chawa Liwer, 1941: born about 1893, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1383 (passenger and crew lists of vessels arriving at Seattle)…
  FamilySearch's index of the Seattle passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Chawa Liwer, born about 1893 in Poland, arriving at Seattle in 1941. The register's compiled line gives 1892, and the two are 1 year apart. The name occurs once on the register, and a Polish-born passenger landing at Seattle in 1941 fits the route through Japan, so the entry is taken as this person's under the archive's rule of 19 September 2026 for records from the route.
• Suzanne Hannali (Facebook): grandparents Avram and Chava Liwer, Sugihara list Nos. 1025-1026, with daughter Jadzia — escape from Będzin, Poland
• Arlette Liwer-Stuip, account written for this archive of her grandmother CHAWA LIWER, nee HELLER, register No. 1025 — her birth at Szydłowiec in 1891 and the registration two years late that put a wrong date of birth into the records, th…
• A ship, arriving at Seattle in 1941: list or manifest of alien passengers, the sheet that names Roza Aszkenazy — US National Archives, Record Group 85 (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving…

and 1 further records, shown on the full entry.

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