The Sugihara Visa Archive

Rudawski Chaim

Visa no. 1916 · Kaunas, 19 August 1940

Rudawski Chaim received transit visa no. 1916 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 19 August 1940. Aged 46 in 1940.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded
Polish
Age in 1940
46
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list
wife Malka (34), son Moszek (17)

The journey

Reached Japan; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for USA.

Travelled with, and never given a number

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

Chaim Yitzchak and Malka Rudawski, originally from Poland, purchased forged Sugihara transit visas from a Jewish forger named Abram Richter, who made the visas himself. Using these forged documents they escaped via Kobe, Japan, arriving in San Francisco in May 1941. Chaim died in 1944/45, Malka died in the 1990s, and the couple had no descendants; Chaim reportedly met Richter again in Israel in the late 1960s/early 1970s.

Where this comes from

Open this entry in the full register →