Isak Levin

Isak Levin received transit visa no. 17 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 26 July 1940. The register records rabbi, aged 34.

Documents

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

34

Occupation

Rabbi

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

son Natan (4), husband of #13

The journey

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

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Natan — child, aged 5

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

Izaak Levin, born 1906 in Vitebsk and residing in Vilnius, obtained a Lithuanian safe-conduct (Leidimas/Sauf-Conduit) travel document together with his wife Perla (born 1911) and son Natan (born 1936). The document bears a Japanese transit visa (Sugihara-type) as well as a Curacao/Dutch endorsement and British Consulate stamps, permitting travel through Vladivostok and Japan toward the Dutch colonies of Curacao and Surinam and onward to America. Multiple official stamps from the Vilnius city authorities and the Japanese consulate appear on the pages.

This is a Lithuanian Leidimas / Sauf-Conduit (safe-conduct in lieu of passport for a foreigner) issued to Isaak Levin, born 1906 in Vilkija, residing in Vilnius. It notes he is accompanied by his wife Perla (born 1911) and son Natan (born 1936). The document was valid for one journey and issued in July 1940.

This is a Lithuanian 'Leidimas / Sauf-conduit' (safe-conduct in lieu of passport) issued to Izaak Zorn, born 1906 in Vidzieca, of Mosaic (Jewish) faith. The document accompanies his wife Perla and their son Natum. It was issued in Vilnius (Vilna) and dated July 14, 1940.

LEIDIMAS SAUF-CONDUIT VIZA Nr. 683 Levin Izaak le Consulat des Pays-Bas declare que la presente que pour l'entree Missions etrangeres en Surinam, Curacao et autres possessions neerlandaises en Amerique, un visa d'entree n'est pas requis.

LEIDIMAS SAUF-CONDUIT Le porteur est accompagne Isaak Isaak Levin Vilkija 1906.I.14

LIETUVOS RESPUBLIKA LEIDIMAS SAUF-CONDUIT Le porteur est accompagne... Vilniaus Miesto ir Apskrities Virsininkas

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 an Izaak Lewin at entry 8306, born 1909 at Troki, who had come from Wolozyna; the register's compiled age points to a birth about 1906, so the archive shows the entry as a lead, not as this person's record.
• 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…
  Entry 100 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 30, born at Wieliczka, a rabbi, who arrived in Japan from Vilnius on 2 January 1941.
• 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 2 Jan 1941 (line 17)
• Oral history interview with Nathan Lewin — USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, in… — transcript read 24 Aug 2026 (streams online; interviewed Potomac, Maryland, 17 April 2024, interviewer Ginny Glickman; captions in 14 languages)
  USC Shoah Foundation VHA interview 62029: Nathan Lewin — his father Isaac — gave a testimony (catalogue: born Jan 31 1936, Łódź (Łódź, Poland)); born Lodz 31 Jan 1936; parents Isaak and Doba (Pessla) Lewin, Nos.17 and 13
• Manifest of alien passengers, SS Tatuta Maru, sailing from Yokohama 6 March 1941, arrived San Francisco 20 March 1941 (US National Archives, M1410, film 368; read on FamilySearch's copy)
  He arrived at San Francisco on 20 March 1941 aboard the Tatuta Maru from Yokohama, with his young son, on a US visitor's visa issued at Kobe on 28 February 1941; the manifest gives his birthplace as Wieliczka, his calling as rabbi, his father as A. Lewin of Lwów, and his destination as a friend in Brooklyn (manifest held by the US National Archives, read on FamilySearch's copy). The calling of rabbi and the young son are what the register's compilers recorded for him.
• The Lithuanian sauf-conduit of Isaak Levin (No. 17), with his wife's and his photographs, and the facing visa page with his Sugihara transit visa for Curaçao — two pages side by side.
• The Lithuanian sauf-conduit (Leidimas) of Isaak Levin (No. 17), Series A No. 07808, issued at Vilnius in 1940, with his wife's and his photographs.
• The Lithuanian sauf-conduit of Isaak Levin (No. 17), Series A No. 07808, with his wife's and his photographs — a second copy.
• How my grandmother’s chutzpah helped Japan's consul save thousands of Jews | The Times of Israel
• A document held in the archive's files
• Jan Zwartendyk Jr., "Jan Zwartendijk — his activities as Dutch consul in Lithuania, 1940" (remember.org, updated 3 December 2005)
• Chiune Sugihara Facts - The Sugihara Curaçao Visas
• The Angel of Curaçao – Mishpacha
• Alyza D. Lewin, Times of Israel/JTA (26 Apr 2016): "How my grandmother's chutzpah helped Japan's consul save thousands of Jews" — Peppy Sternheim Lewin obtained the FIRST Curaçao formula (de Decker, Riga, 11 Jul 1940 in her passport; Zwa…

and 6 further records, shown on the full entry.

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