Chaim Wasser

Chaim Wasser received transit visa no. 196 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 26 August 1940. The register records clerk, aged 52.

Documents

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polish

Age in 1940

52

Occupation

Clerk

The journey

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

Where this comes from

• "Washington, King, Seattle, Passenger Lists, 1890-1957", FamilySearch — index entry for Chiel Majer Wasser, 1941: born about 1890, Polish. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1383 (passenger and crew lists of vessels arriving at S…
  FamilySearch's index of the Seattle passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Chiel Majer Wasser, born about 1890 in Polish, arriving at Seattle in 1941. The register's compiled line gives 1888, and the two are 2 years apart. The name occurs once on the register, and a passenger born in Poland landing at Seattle 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.
• "Washington, King, Seattle, Passenger Lists, 1890-1957", FamilySearch — index entry for Chiel Majer Wasser, 1941: born about 1890, Polish. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1383 (passenger and crew lists of vessels arriving at S…
  The manifest sheet itself has him on the Hikawa Maru, which sailed from Yokohama on 13 February 1941 and reached Seattle on the 25th: Chiel Majer Wasser, aged 51, married, a clerk, Polish, born at Grajewo, last residence Kaunas, on an American non-immigrant visa, No. 16, issued at Kaunas on 22 July 1940, the week before his Sugihara visa. The inspector's later notes extend his stay to April 1944 and record that he was readmitted at Rouses Point, New York, on 20 December 1943 on a Polish quota visa issued at Montreal, the usual way a visitor's entry was turned into an immigrant's. The age and the occupation agree with the register's compiled line. (The sheet is in the National Archives' passenger and crew lists of vessels arriving at Seattle, microfilm M1383; the archive read FamilySearch's copy.)
• 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 Chil Majer Wasser, 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.
• The Hikawa Maru, arriving at Seattle in 1941: list or manifest of alien passengers, the sheet that names Paulina Szweber — US National Archives, Record Group 85 (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessel…
• The Hikawa Maru, arriving at Seattle in 1941: the continuation sheet, with the relatives named and the destinations, for the sheet that names Paulina Szweber — US National Archives, Record Group 85 (Immigration and Naturalization Service…

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