Chaim Lejba Szmuelewicz received transit visa no. 1205 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 6 August 1940. The register records rabbi - mir yeshiva, aged 37.
What the register records
Nationality as recorded
Polnisch
Age in 1940
37
Occupation
Rabbi - Mir Yeshiva
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list
husband of #1203, children (Edel (9), Rafael (3), Rywka (5))
The journey
Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; registered in Kobe for USA.
Travelled with, and never given a number
Edel — child, aged 9
Rafael — child, aged 3
Rywka — child, aged 5
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
The Sznulewicz family, Polish citizens from the Mir/Stuczyn region, appear together as entries 1-5 on a Mirer Yeshivah relief list (List #10) compiled while refugees were sheltering in Kobe, Japan after fleeing eastward, likely with transit visas issued in Kaunas.
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… 240-243, and family, 1903 Szczuczyn; friend Rabbi Kalmanowicz 540 Betford Av Brooklyn
The JEWCOM register — the refugee register kept by the Refugee Committee of the Jewish Community of Kobe (Ashkenazim) at No. 6 Yamamoto-dori, 1-chome, whose cable address was 'JEWCOM Kobe'. Eighty-four pages on the committee's own printe… #648, age 38, b. Szczuczyn, rabbi, arr. 13.2