Mlotek Josek

Mlotek Josek received transit visa no. 1860 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 17 August 1940. The register records journalist, aged 21.

Documents

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Lithuanien

Age in 1940

21

Occupation

Journalist

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

brother-in-law of #1828

The journey

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

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 178 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: born 1918 at Proszowice; relatives abroad: an uncle, Alex Salsman, Brooklyn.
• 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…
  The Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 23, born at Proszowice, a journalist, who arrived in Japan on 14 February 1941.
• Rabbi Avram Mlotek (Facebook): JBS studio encounter with Chihiro Sugihara — grandson of the consul meets grandson of Yosl Mlotek (No.1860); Yom HaShoah broadcast
  recorded elsewhere as Yosl Mlotek, a credible spelling of this line's Milotek Josek. Matched on the name alone — no date or document confirms it is the same person
• The Shanghai Ledger — register of Polish citizens kept by the Consulate of Poland in Shanghai, 1934-1943 (original at the Archives of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ref. 43/2003; digitised by the Library of Congress; indexed as…
  Registered with the Polish Consulate in Shanghai (ledger entry 1334); the names closely match this register line — approved by the owner's review, 19 Aug 2026 — the ledger reads: Mlotek Josek, JOURNALIST (dziennikarz), born 1918 Proszowice; 281 Liaoyang Road; registered November 1941 on a passport issued by the Shanghai consulate 20 November 1941 (M-106, Ser. III 1705).
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database — the Flight and Rescue electronic dataset (source 20725): USHMM's own transcription of the Kaunas register, 2,140 persons with citizenship, visa type, iss…
  USHMM Flight and Rescue dataset: arrived in Japan 14 Feb 1941 (line 1860)
• Archive of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Paweł Ceranka), reply of 10 September 2026, sh… — Josek Młotek's certificate of Polish citizenship with a Sugihara visa on its reverse, his Shanghai-issued passport, and a 1948 photograph
  Three documents held by the Archive of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Warsaw. A certificate of Polish citizenship issued to him by the British Legation in Lithuania on 12 December 1939, on the form of the already-closed Polish Legation in Kaunas — its reverse carries a Sugihara transit visa stamped 20 August 1940, three days after the consulate's day-book entry of 17 August; the archive records both dates. A Polish passport, Ser. III Nr. 1705, issued to him in Shanghai — the number the Shanghai consular register already records against him at entry 1334. And a photograph of him from 1948.
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Josek Mlotek, 1947: born about 1919, 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 Josek Mlotek, born about 1919 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1947 on the General M. C. Meigs. The register's compiled line gives 1918, and the two are 1 year apart, and the name occurs once on the register. The sheet names the ship but its heading could not be read for the port she sailed from, so this is held as a lead until it can. The sheet is NARA microfilm publication M1410, film 390, image 210, read by the archive on 20 September 2026.
• La-karov ve-la-rachok, 29 August 1946 — the Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
  The Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai, printed by the Jewish Agency Search Bureau's bulletin La-karov ve-la-rachok on 29 August 1946, lists Josef Mlotek: born 1918 at Proszowice, a journalist, arrived in 1941 from Kowno; the year, the town and the trade agree with the Kobe Jewish community's refugee register, the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
• Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem — the card file of Jewish refugees from Poland who found refuge in various countries, 1939–1941
  Yad Vashem's card file of Jewish refugees from Poland who found refuge in various countries, 1939–1941, has a card for Josef Mlotek, who was in Wilno during the war. The archive attaches it under its rule of 19 September 2026: the card file is a record of the refugees in Wilno, where the road through Sugihara's visas began; the full name occurs once on the register; and the card places the person in Wilno in 1939–41, on the road to Sugihara's visas. Credit: Yad Vashem Archives.
• Canadian Jewish Heritage Network / Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives
  The Canadian Jewish Heritage Network's authority record for Joseph Mlotek, from the Jewish Public Library Archives in Montreal and read on 24 October 2026, gives his life dates as 1918 to 2000. Three things tie the record to him: the given name, the birth year 1918, which the Kobe list gives, and Montreal, where the Canadian visa issued to him in Shanghai in 1941 was taking him; there is no other Josek on the register under this surname. The authority record gives only the name and dates, with no birthplace or occupation.
• Archive of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Paweł Ceranka), reply of 10 September 2026, sh… — Josek Młotek's certificate of Polish citizenship with a Sugihara visa on its reverse, his Shanghai-issued passport, and a 1948 photograph

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