Berkowicz Rys received transit visa no. 1574 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 9 August 1940. The register records student, aged 18.
What the register records
Nationality as recorded
Polnisch
Age in 1940
18
Occupation
Student
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list
daughter of #1573
The journey
Reached Japan; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for New Zealand.
What is known
This is a Japanese 'Permit for Stay in Japan' (No. 2219) issued to Rys Berkowicz, a Polish Jewish refugee (nationality listed as 波蘭 (猶太系), Poland, Jewish), a 19-year-old female student. The permit, issued by the Governor of Hyogo Prefecture on July 8, 1941, authorized her stay in Japan from June 14 to July 30, 1941, at an address in Kobe. Such permits were part of the paperwork for Jewish refugees who escaped through Japan, many via Sugihara transit visas.
A postcard sent from the Warsaw ghetto (bearing a 'Judenrat Warschau' stamp and a 30-groszy Generalgouvernement postal stamp) addressed to L. Berkowicz, care of 'JEWCOM' (Jewish Community aid organization) at No. 6 Yamamoto-Dori Ichome, Kobe, Japan. The sender, also named L. Berkowicz of Nowolipki, Warszawa, is corresponding with a relative who had reached Kobe, a common destination for refugees traveling on Sugihara/Curacao transit visas. Numbers 7118, 7099, 7129, 7043 are noted on the card.
When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Ruth's father fled to eastern Poland and then Lithuania after the Soviet occupation. Ruth left Warsaw to find her father and joined him in Vilna. Both obtained transit visas for Japan, but only Ruth received a Soviet exit visa; she traveled the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok and by ship to Japan, later reuniting with her father and uncles in Kobe before immigrating to the United States. Her mother, brother, and sisters perished in the Holocaust.
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… No 15; 1921 Warszawa; Polish; uncle B.Berkowicz New York
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… #35, 20, b. Warsaw, student, arr 13.2, from Vilno
"List of persons arriving on route to New Zealand" — the arrival roster for the sailing from Japan, September 1941: 33 typed names, from Dr George Bluman’s own marked-up copy (sent 18 Aug 2026). Bluman’s red ticks mark the passengers he… Named on the list of persons arriving on route to New Zealand, sailing from Japan in 1941. The ledger's line for her reads 'Berkowicz is' — the R lost off the front of her name. The arrival list has it whole.