Lew Josef

Lew Josef received transit visa no. 1393 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 7 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student - lecker yeshiva, aged 16.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

16

Occupation

Rabbinical Student - Lecker Yeshiva

The journey

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

Where this comes from

• List of Refugees, Vilna, 1940 — JDC Archives, New York, collection AR 33/44, file 00876. The contemporary register of Polish Jewish refugees in Lithuania, running to more than nine thousand numbered entries; the fullest independent check…
  The 1940 Vilna refugee list has a Josef Lew at entry 3347, born 1919 at Warsaw, who had come from Częstoniew. It is shown as a lead, not as this person: born 1919 against the register's age of 16, which puts the birth about 1924.
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database — the Flight and Rescue electronic dataset (source 20725): USHMM's own transcription of the Kaunas register, 2,140 persons with citizenship, visa type, iss…
  USHMM Flight and Rescue dataset: arrived in Japan 13 Feb 1941 (line 1393)
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Josel Arja Lew, 1941: born about 1924, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Francisco)…
  FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Josel Arja Lew, born about 1924 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1941. The register's compiled line gives 1924, and the two agree. The name occurs once on the register, and a Polish-born passenger landing at San Francisco 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.
• 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…
  The Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register lists Josel Arja Lew, aged 17, born at Koden, a yeshiva student, who reached Japan on 13 February 1941. Sugihara's ledger writes his given name Jozel; the register writes Josel.
• Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem — the card file of Jewish refugees from Poland who found refuge in various countries, 1939–1941
  Yad Vashem's card file of Jewish refugees from Poland who found refuge in various countries, 1939–1941, has a card for Josef Lew, who was in Wilno during the war. The archive attaches it under its rule of 19 September 2026: the card file is a record of the refugees in Wilno, where the road through Sugihara's visas began; the full name occurs once on the register; and the card places the person in Wilno in 1939–41, on the road to Sugihara's visas. Credit: Yad Vashem Archives.

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