The Sugihara Visa Archive

Szepsenwol Fejga

Visa no. 1609 · Kaunas, 12 August 1940

Szepsenwol Fejga received transit visa no. 1609 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 12 August 1940. Aged 18 in 1940.

Documents

Document — Szepsenwol Fejga
Catalogue still for the oral history of Lucille Camhi — USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, interview 8728 (the archive's public catalogue frame); links to the testimony at vha.usc.edu/testimony/8728

Click a document to see it larger.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded
Polnisch
Age in 1940
18
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list
sister Lucille (17)

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

Lucille's father died three months before she was born, and her mother planned to immigrate to the United States with Lucille and her sister Fejga. Their emigration was interrupted by the German invasion of Poland in 1939; fearing Soviet arrest for being in a Jewish Zionist youth group, the girls fled from Volozhin to Vilna, where their mother later joined them. Lucille and Fejga traveled to Kovno, retrieved their American immigration papers and obtained Japanese transit visas directly from Chiune Sugihara. They left Vilna by the Trans-Siberian Express, arrived in Japan in September 1940, reached the United States in November 1940, and their mother joined them a year later.

Lucille Szepsenwol Camhi, a teenager, escaped from Poland to Lithuania with her sister. In summer 1940 they stood in long lines outside the Japanese consulate in Kaunas and pleaded with Sugihara, telling him their mother had no papers and their father was dead. Sugihara stamped and gave them visas on the spot.

Lucille Szepsenwol Camhi's father died before she was born, and her mother planned to immigrate to the United States with Lucille and her sister Fejga, but the German invasion of Poland in 1939 prevented them from getting final papers. Lucille and her sister fled to Vilna and later traveled to Kovno, where they obtained their American immigration papers and Japanese transit visas from Sugihara. They left via the Trans-Siberian Express, arriving in Japan in September 1940 and the United States in November 1940; their mother joined them a year later.

My sister and I pushed ourselves into the room with, uh, Mr. Sugihara. He was...he asked us our name. He asked us where our parents were. We told him. My father was not living. My mother has no papers. And he looked very sympathetic at us and he just stamped, gave us the visa right there on the spot. We got very hysterical. My sister and I got hysterical, started to cry and started to say, "Thank you, thank you," in Polish. And he just raised his hand like saying, it's okay.

He looked very sympathetic[ally] at us, and he just stamped, gave us the visa right there on the spot My sister and I got hysterical, started to cry, and started to say, 'Thank you, thank you,' in Polish.

Lucille and her sister traveled to Kovno for those papers and also succeeded in obtaining Japanese transit visas. They left Vilna, traveling by the Trans-Siberian Express, and arrived in Japan in September 1940. In November 1940, they arrived in the United States.

Where this comes from

Open this entry in the full register →