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.
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… 259, 1920 Lodz; 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… #642, age 21, b. Lodz, student, arr. 25.2, no.403