Ofman Jozef

Ofman Jozef received transit visa no. 1949 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 19 August 1940. The register records clerk, aged 36.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polish

Age in 1940

36

Occupation

Clerk

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

husband of #1876

The journey

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

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 5369, Josef Szofman, born 1903 at Warsaw, who had come from Warsaw; the year agrees with the register's age.
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Yozef Ofman, 1941: born about 1905, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Francisco). R…
  FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Yozef Ofman, born about 1905 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1941. The register's compiled line gives 1904, and the two are 1 year apart. The name occurs once on the register, and a Polish-born passenger landing at San Francisco in 1941 fits the route through Japan, so the entry is taken as this person's under the archive's rule of 19 September 2026 for records from the route.
• Manifest of alien passengers, SS Kamakura Maru, sailing from Yokohama March 27th 1941, arrived San Francisco April 10th 1941 (US National Archives, M1410, film 369; read on FamilySearch's copy)
  He reached San Francisco on 10 April 1941 on the Kamakura Maru with his wife Paulina and their son, on American visitor's visas issued at Kaunas on 23 July 1940, going to his wife's uncle Joseph Arkin in New York, according to the passenger list held by the National Archives (FamilySearch's copy). The wife's name and the son are the family the register's compilers recorded for him, and visitor's visas issued at Kaunas in July 1940 fit the date of his Sugihara visa.

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