Gutwirth Tenzer Nathan received transit visa no. 1264 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 6 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student - telshe yeshiva, aged 24.
What the register records
Nationality as recorded
Netherlandy
Age in 1940
24
Occupation
Rabbinical Student - Telshe Yeshiva
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list
wife Nechama (23)
The journey
Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; registered in Kobe for Indonesia.
Travelled with, and never given a number
Nechama — wife, aged 23
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
Nathan Gutwirth, a Dutch student at a yeshiva in Kovno, was possibly a good friend of the newly appointed Dutch ambassador and requested permission to go to Curacao, a Dutch Caribbean island that required no entry documents. He obtained a Dutch statement that no visa was required, then sought a transit visa. After being repeatedly turned down, he obtained a Japanese transit visa from Chiune Sugihara, giving him complete documents to survive the Holocaust.
In the summer of 1940, Nathan Gutwirth, a Dutch student at the Telsh yeshiva, approached honorary Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk in Kaunas about finding safe refuge abroad, since he could not return to Nazi-occupied Holland. It was decided he should go to the Dutch colony of Curacao, and Zwartendijk agreed to provide documentation confirming his right of entry, leaving off the stipulation that entry required the island governor's approval. This precedent led to Zwartendijk issuing similar Curacao visas to Polish and other refugees, who then applied to Japanese vice-consul Sugihara Chiune for transit visas.
Nathan Gutwirth, a young Dutch yeshiva student, separately approached the Dutch legation in Kaunas in July 1940 for a destination visa and received the altered Curacao phrasing from Zwartendijk. He took the visa to Rabbi Zorach Warhaftig, who urged him to ask Zwartendijk to issue such visas to Polish-Jewish refugees. Zwartendijk agreed, setting in motion the mass rescue effort.
Where this comes from
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… #21 Dutch, 24, b. Antwerp, Student, from Telschei
Arlette Liwer on NATHAN GUTWIRTH, register No. 1264 — a page written for this archive and sent on 9 August 2026. It sets out what the register line can and cannot be read as, the spellings its damaged text allows, and her family's own ac… A page written for this archive setting out this register line, the spellings its damaged text allows, and the family's own account. Given by Arlette Liwer-Stuip.