Liwer Abram received transit visa no. 1026 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 3 August 1940. The register records industrialist, aged 48.
What the register records
Nationality as recorded
Polnisch
Age in 1940
48
Occupation
Industrialist
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list
husband of #1025
The journey
Reached Japan; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for USA.
What is known
Abraham Liwer of Będzin, Poland foresaw the Nazi invasion and urged his family and friends to flee. He fled Będzin with his wife Chawa and daughter Jadzia by train to Warsaw on 1-2 September 1939, in the first days of the invasion. Following a major deportation to Auschwitz in mid-1942, the remaining Jews in town — some 20,000 — were later confined to the Będzin-Kamionka and Sosnowiec-Środula ghettos in early 1943. On a Communist blacklist, he escaped into Lithuania with guides on a freezing New Year's Eve while the border soldiers drank, reached Kaunas, and obtained first a Curaçao declaration from Jan Zwartendijk and then Sugihara transit visas — No.1026 for himself, with his daughter J…
His granddaughter Suzanne Hannali counts herself among the tens of thousands of descendants of Sugihara visa holders.
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… 85; 52; Bedzin; industrial.
hunt/familysearch: US arrival manifest: Abram Liver, Seattle, 1941 "Seattle Passenger Lists", FamilySearch, entry for Abram Liver, 1941. Ship: Hie Maru. Matched from the Hie Maru's Polish-born passenger list (87 people). Register No.1026 'Liver Abram' records age 51; the manifest gives born 1890, arriving 1941.
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 and reproduced it here, 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… Line 12 of the Seattle manifest, and the fullest single record the archive holds of one man's crossing. Abram Liver, 51, born 1890 in Poland, co-proprietor of a factory, Polish citizen, Hebrew, reading Polish and German. Column 13 records a United States transit visa issued at MOSCOW on 23 December 1940 - obtained at the American Embassy on his way to Vladivostok, in addition to Zwartendijk's Curaçao notation and Sugihara's transit visa. Stamped ADMITTED over a pencilled 'BSI': he was held for a Board of Special Inquiry, file 424/2860. The hearing let him in on 27 AUGUST 1941, two months after landing, on a $500 bond, with the head tax paid and leave to remain until 14 December 1942. A later hand adds 'Adm. Rouses Point, N.Y. 5/3/43 for perm. res.' - he crossed back from Canada into the United States at the Lake Champlain border post on 3 May 1943 and stayed. The compiled register gives his age as 48; the manifest and his stated birth year make him 51.
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; the sheet stamped 34251/10, sailing from Yokohama, ten pa… Line 1 of the sheet, and the first line the register's Abram Liwer has ever had of his own. LIVER, ABRAM, 51, married, co-proprietor of a bread factory; reads Polish, English and German and writes; Polish nationality, Hebrew; born at Bedzin and last resident at Bedzin. He travelled on a United States transit visa under section 3(3), number TC 10, issued at Moscow on 23 December 1940. The register gives him as an industrialist, husband of No. 1025, bound for the United States. Four things agree independently of the name: the trade, close to the register's; the Polish nationality; the destination, since he was the one member of the family admitted to the United States while his wife went on to Canada; and Bedzin, which is also the birthplace and last residence given for his wife two sheets later on the same voyage. The manifest makes him 51 where the register makes him 48; the register gives the same age, 48, to husband and wife alike, and the wife's 48 is what the manifest confirms. He was one of two men on the sheet held for a Board of Special Inquiry - file 424/2860 - while the rest were admitted on the day of arrival, and the head-tax column records him admitted on 27 August 1…
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', 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.