Artur Lermer received transit visa no. 1829 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 16 August 1940. The register records teacher, aged 31.
What the register records
Nationality as recorded
Lithuanien
Age in 1940
31
Occupation
Teacher
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list
husband of #1830, child Soria (1)
The journey
Reached Japan; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for Canada.
Travelled with, and never given a number
Soria — child, aged 1
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
This is a Lithuanian Republic 'Leidimas / Sauf-Conduit' (safe-conduct issued in lieu of a foreign passport) issued at Kaunas in September 1940 to Artur Lermer, a teacher born 3 October 1908 in Krakow. He was accompanied by his wife Miriam, born 1 December 1914 in Lodz, and their infant son Loria, born 18 October 1939. The document was valid for all countries and expires March 1941, with attached Lithuanian visa fee stamps.
Arthur Lermer, his wife Miriam and their small son Zoria received visas Nos.1829-1830 on 16 August 1940 and a Lithuanian safe-conduct on 5 September — among the last documents Sugihara signed before the consulate closed. Photographed in Tokyo in 1940, the family eventually reached Montreal, where Arthur became a noted economist and the safe-conduct entered the Montreal Holocaust Museum's collection.
The family's Lithuanian safe-conduct — issued 5 September 1940, carrying Sugihara visas Nos.1829 and 1830 — survives at the Montreal Holocaust Museum, donated in 2002 by Judith Lermer Crawley, Arthur and Miriam's daughter. The museum's telling of the escape: the story began in Poland, and in the autumn of 1939 Arthur fled eastward with his pregnant wife and her sister, staying ahead of the German advance. Their son Zoria was born in Łuck on the road; the family was smuggled into Vilnius. Both the American and the Dutch consulates turned them down before Sugihara approved a ten-day transit visa. In Tokyo — where two 1940 photographs show Miriam and little Zoria in a park, and the three tog…
Where this comes from
hunt/familysearch: US arrival manifest: Miriam Lermer, Seattle, 1941 "Seattle Passenger Lists", FamilySearch, entry for Arthur Lermer, 1941. Ship: Hie Maru. Matched from the Hie Maru's Polish-born passenger list (87 people). Register No.1829 'Artur Lermer' records age 31; the manifest gives born 1908, arriving 1941.