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.…
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… #25, Netherland, 21, born Amsterdam, merchant, from Vilno, arr 2.1.1941
Arlette Liwer-Stuip, email to the archive, 26 August 2026: an account of Levi (Leo) Sternheim — Pessla Lewin’s brother and Nathan Gutwirth’s chavrusa at Telz — written for this archive, drawing on the Gutwirth family archive and Nathan G… 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.