Leiba Levin received transit visa no. 13 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 25 July 1940. Aged 29 in 1940.
What the register records
Nationality as recorded
Polisch
Age in 1940
29
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list
wife of #17
The journey
Reached Japan; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for USA.
What is known
Pessla Lewin, a Dutch national, approached the Dutch legation in Kaunas in July 1940 seeking a destination visa. Ambassador de Decker altered her passport to state that no entry visa was required for Curacao, omitting the governor's permit requirement, and Zwartendijk copied the same phrasing for her Dutch family. With these documents her family obtained Japanese transit visas from Sugihara, enabling escape via Japan.
In late June 1940 Pessla Lewin, a former Dutch citizen married to the Pole Isaac Lewin, sought help escaping Soviet-occupied Lithuania. Ambassador de Decker wrote in her Polish passport on July 11, 1940 that no visa was required for Curacao and other Dutch possessions in the Americas, creating the first 'Curacao visa.' On July 26, 1940 the Lewin family (Isaac, Pessla, young son Nathan, plus Pessla's mother Rachel Sternheim and brother Levi Sternheim) presented these visas to Sugihara, establishing the Curacao visas' credibility for subsequent refugees.
Mrs. Pessla Lewin, formerly of Dutch nationality and married to the Polish rabbi Isaac Lewin, initiated the Curacao visa scheme by obtaining from Dutch ambassador De Decker a note that no visa was required for Curacao and Surinam, then had Zwartendijk copy it. Sugihara granted the family Japanese transit visas on 25 and 26 July 1940 (their son Nathan included). The family eventually obtained a Palestine visa and a Soviet transit/exit visa, leaving Vladivostok for Japan on 31 December 1940 and arriving in Kobe on 2 January 1941.