Seroka Simon

Seroka Simon received transit visa no. 1918 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 19 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student - telshe yeshiva, aged 22.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polish

Age in 1940

22

Occupation

Rabbinical Student - Telshe Yeshiva

The journey

Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for Palestine.

Where this comes from

• List of Refugees, Vilna, 1940 — JDC Archives, New York, collection AR 33/44, file 00876. The contemporary register of Polish Jewish refugees in Lithuania, running to more than nine thousand numbered entries; the fullest independent check…
  The 1940 Vilna refugee list has, at entry 6775, Szymon Seroki, born 1918, who came from Lukow; the year agrees with the register's compiled age, and the town with what the archive already holds for this line.
• List of Refugees, Vilna, 1940 — JDC Archives, New York, collection AR 33/44, file 00876. The contemporary register of Polish Jewish refugees in Lithuania, running to more than nine thousand numbered entries; the fullest independent check…
  The 1940 Vilna refugee list has, at entry 5317, Szymon Seroka, born 1918, who had come from Łuków; the year agrees with the register's age and Łuków agrees with the archive's other records.
• 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 284 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: aged 23, born at Lukow, a yeshiva student; relatives abroad: an uncle, Friedman, 901 East 179th Street.
• Mark Halpern correspondence (9 Aug 2026): Netherlands Legation certificate, Tokyo, 18 March 1941 — Minister J.C. Pabst certifies that 74 named persons of Polish nationality "do not need a Netherlands visa in order to proceed to the Nethe…
  Amakusa Maru 74 — Netherlands Legation certificate (Tokyo, 18 Mar 1941), line 5. Cross-referenced by Mark Halpern, researcher (Aug 2026); archive pass concurs.
• The list of seventy-four — Netherlands Legation, Tokyo, 18 March 1941. On the Legation's letterhead (Gezantschap der Nederlanden), certifying 'that the undermentioned persons all of Polish nationality do not need a Netherlands visa in or…
  Named at position 5 of seventy-four on the Netherlands Legation's certificate of 18 March 1941 — the list of the people who reached Tsuruga on Sugihara's transit visas without a Curaçao endorsement, were refused permission to land, and whose ship was turned back towards Vladivostok. The Legation typed the name as "Seroka Szymon". A pencilled note beside it gives this register number, which is how the two records are joined.
• Haaretz, 2 February 1942, and HaTzofe, 3 February 1942 (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
  Szymon Seroka went on to Palestine by way of India: in February 1942 Haaretz (2 February) and HaTzofe (3 February 1942) listed him, with Szaja Lanienter, among the immigrants then on their way from India to the Land of Israel (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
• She'arim, 28 August 1947 (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
  A possible record, not yet confirmed as this person: a Shimon Seroka sat with Rabbi Shmuel Szczedrowicki — who had come from India with him in 1942 — among the alternates of World Agudat Yisrael's executive in Jerusalem in 1947 (She'arim, 28 August 1947), and a Shimon Seroka of Agudat Yisrael was later deputy mayor of Bnei Brak (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press). Neither is yet tied to Szymon Seroka by age or town, so they are shown as leads.

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