Levi Sternheim

Levi Sternheim received transit visa no. 18 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 26 July 1940. The register records rabbinical student - telshe yeshiva, aged 21.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Neserlands

Age in 1940

21

Occupation

Rabbinical Student - Telshe Yeshiva

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

brother of #13

The journey

Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; registered in Kobe for Indonesia.

What is known

Leo Sternheim, brother of Peppy Sternheim Lewin and a Dutch citizen, was smuggled into Lithuania with the family. He received Sugihara's 18th visa on July 26, 1940, escaping via the purported Curacao route.

Levi (Leo or Lev) Sternheim, a Dutch citizen, was both Pessla Lewin’s brother and Nathan Gutwirth’s closest friend and chavrusa — his study partner — at the Telz Yeshiva in Lithuania. The two studied, read and debated together and were rarely apart. Their friendship continued after Lithuania. In Kobe, when seventy-four refugees faced deportation, Levi went with Nathan to the Dutch consul Niek de Voogd. They showed him the original Curaçao declaration Nathan had obtained from the Dutch envoy L. P. J. de Decker and asked for help. De Voogd supplied them with blank consular stationery, enabling them to prepare the documents that helped prevent the refugees from being returned to Vladivostok.…

my great-uncle, Levi (Leo) Sternheim, received Sugihara's 18th visa

Unfortunately, Mr. Sternheim died on May 23, 1943 at the Island of Flores where both of us have been imprisoned.

Where this comes from

• 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 25 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: listed among Dutch subjects, aged 21, born at Amsterdam, a merchant, who arrived in Japan from Vilnius on 2 January 1941.
• Arlette Liwer-Stuip, email to the archive, 26 August 2026: an account of Levi (Leo) Sternheim — Pessla Lewin’s brother and Nathan Gutwir… — written for this archive, drawing on the Gutwirth family archive and Nathan Gutwirth’s own writing
  An account written for this archive of Levi — Lev, or Leo — Sternheim: Nathan Gutwirth's study partner at Telz and Pessla Lewin's brother, one of the personal channels through which the Curaçao answer first travelled. The register carries only three Dutch nationals, and two of them are this entry and Nathan Gutwirth at No. 1264, which is the connection the account describes. Given by Arlette Liwer-Stuip.
• Proposal to Yad Vashem for the recognition of NICOLAAS ARIE JOHANNES ('NIEK') DE VOOGD as Righteous Among the Nations, reference CAS-248383, written by his nephew Johannes Willem de Vries and supplied to this archive by the author. Twent…
  Like Nathan Gutwirth, he went from Kobe to Java in 1941. Hans de Vries's account has him interned by the Japanese there from February 1942 for three and a half years. (Hans de Vries, proposal to Yad Vashem for N. A. J. de Voogd, January 2020.)
• How my grandmother’s chutzpah helped Japan's consul save thousands of Jews | The Times of Israel
• 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…
• Akira Kitade, Japan Forward (22 Jan 2018): "The Woman Who Opened the Path for Visas for Life" — Peppy Sternheim Lewin (b.1911); only THREE Dutch nationals on the register: Rachel Sternheim No.16, Levi Sternheim No.18, Nathan Gutwirth No.…

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