Mery Szefner

Mery Szefner received transit visa no. 1808 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 16 August 1940. The register records student, aged 20.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

20

Occupation

Student

The journey

Reached Japan; registered in Kobe for USA.

What is known

Mery Szefner, born in Lodz in 1920, was the daughter of Bundist Boruch Szefner. She fled Warsaw in December 1939, crossed the frozen Bug River into Soviet-occupied Poland, and reached Vilna. She obtained Sugihara visa #1808 and picked up her father's American visa in Kaunas. Mery followed her father to Japan and sailed to the United States on the Kamakura Maru in late April 1941. She married Markus Nowogrodzki in 1942.

Mery Szefner, born in Lodz in 1920, was the daughter of Bundist writer Boruch Szefner. In December 1939 she fled Warsaw with friend Iza Sznejerson, crossing the frozen Bug River and entering Lithuania, reaching Vilna where she lived six months. She obtained Sugihara visa #1808 in Kaunas, sailing with her father to the United States on the Kamakura Maru in late April 1941. She married Markus Nowogrodzki in 1942.

Mery also obtained a Sugihara visa (#1808). Mery married Markus Nowogrodzki in 1942, before he was drafted into the U.S. Army.

Mery also obtained a Sugihara visa (#1808). They sailed to the United States on the Kamakura Maru in late April 1941.

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…
  Entry 259 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: born 1920 at Lodz; relatives abroad: an uncle, Hanin, East Broadway, 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…
  Entry 642 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register (also numbered 403): aged 21, born at Lodz, a student, who arrived in Japan on 25 February 1941.
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Mery Szefner, 1941: born about 1921, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Francisco).…
  FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Mery Szefner, born about 1921 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1941. The register's compiled line gives 1920, and the two are 1 year apart. The name occurs once on the register, and a Polish-born passenger landing at San Francisco in 1941 fits the route through Japan, so the entry is taken as this person's under the archive's rule of 19 September 2026 for records from the route.
• Manifest of alien passengers, SS Kamakura Maru, sailing from Yokohama March 27th 1941, arrived San Francisco April 10th 1941 (US National Archives, M1410, film 369; read on FamilySearch's copy)
  She reached San Francisco on 10 April 1941 on the Kamakura Maru, on the line after Boruch Szefner, with an American visitor's visa issued at Kaunas on 24 July 1940, according to the passenger list held by the National Archives (FamilySearch's copy).
• Collections Search - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

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