The Sugihara Visa Archive

Majska Riwa

Visa no. 1545 · Kaunas, 8 August 1940

Majska Riwa received transit visa no. 1545 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 8 August 1940. Aged 46 in 1940.

Documents

Document — Majska Riwa
A ship, arriving at Seattle in 1941: list or manifest of alien passengers, the sheet that names Jacob Leszczinski — US National Archives, Record Group 85 (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at Seattle, microfilm publication M1383, roll 261, frame 671 of the file unit “Apr. 28, 1941, SS Hikawa Maru-June 27, 1941, SS Empire Cannery” (NAID 553888815). Public domain; credit: National Archives at Washington, DC.
Document — Majska Riwa
David Manski, '2017 Journey Retracing the Manski Family's Escape from Poland to the USA, 1939–1941' — his account written for the archive, 3 October 2026, with three photographs from the journey (the Sugihara House Museum, Kaunas; the Chiune Sugihara Memorial Hall, Yaotsu)
Document — Majska Riwa
David Manski, '2017 Journey Retracing the Manski Family's Escape from Poland to the USA, 1939–1941' — his account written for the archive, 3 October 2026, with three photographs from the journey (the Sugihara House Museum, Kaunas; the Chiune Sugihara Memorial Hall, Yaotsu)
Document — Majska Riwa
David Manski, '2017 Journey Retracing the Manski Family's Escape from Poland to the USA, 1939–1941' — his account written for the archive, 3 October 2026, with three photographs from the journey (the Sugihara House Museum, Kaunas; the Chiune Sugihara Memorial Hall, Yaotsu)
Document — Majska Riwa
Arriving at Seattle: the continuation sheet, with the relatives named and the destinations, for the sheet that names Jakob Leszczynski — US National Archives, Record Group 85 (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at Seattle, microfilm publication M1383, roll 261, frame 672 of the file unit “Apr. 28, 1941, SS Hikawa Maru-June 27, 1941, SS Empire Cannery” (NAID 553888815). Public domain; credit: National Archives at Washington, DC.

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded
Polnisch
Age in 1940
46
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list
children (Mira (18), Saul (12)), mother of #1544

The journey

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

Travelled with, and never given a number

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 family's journey retraced, 2017. David Manski, Rywa's grandson and Saul's son, and his wife spent six weeks in the late summer of 2017 following the family's route from Lida to Kaunas, across Siberia to Tsuruga, Kobe and Yaotsu. He wrote this account for the archive in October 2026.

In late summer 2017, my wife, Shira Singer, and I spent about six weeks retracing my family's 1939–1941 escape from their hometown of Lida, Poland (now Belarus), to the United States. They survived the Holocaust thanks to the humanity and generosity of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, who issued my father's family two transit visas to travel east. My father, Saul Manski, was about 11 when the journey began. We started in Lida and then went to Kaunas, Lithuania, to visit the former Japanese consulate, now the Sugihara House Museum. We arrived nearly 77 years to the day after my family received their visas at that very location. We met with museum director Simonas Dovidavičius and museum historian Dr. Linas Venclauskas to talk about our family's connection to Sugihara. Remarkably, a group of students, their principal, and the deputy mayor of Yaotsu, Japan (Sugihara's hometown) arrived during our visit, and as the son of a Sugihara survivor, I was asked to speak to them. It was powerful for all of us to stand in the place where Sugihara enabled my family and thousands of other Jewish refugees to survive. We then followed my family's route east, taking the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok and a ferry to Japan. We wanted to visit Japan to pay our respects and give thanks at the museums dedicated to Sugihara. We first went to Tsuruga, where my father and his family arrived in January 1941. At the Port of Humanity Museum, a memorial to the community's efforts to welcome people in need, including Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis in 1940–1941, director Nishikawa Akinori and Mayor Takanobu Fuchikami received us with overwhelming kindness, likely much as my family was received. We also visited Kobe, where my family and other refugees lived during their stay in Japan. Finally, we went to the Chiune Sugihara Memorial Hall in Yaotsu, where the museum director and the deputy mayor we had met in Kaunas greeted us warmly. Both museums have excellent exhibits in Japanese, Hebrew and English that tell the story of the Holocaust, explain Sugihara's role in saving Jewish refugees, and share survivors' testimonies. Retracing my family's complete journey was emotional and memorable. It also allowed us to thank the Japanese people for keeping Sugihara's memory alive and for teaching today's generation that hatred, prejudice and violence have no place in this world. — David Manski, 3 October 2026

Where this comes from

Open this entry in the full register →