Langer Mozes

Langer Mozes received transit visa no. 2032 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 20 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student, aged 28.

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polish

Age in 1940

28

Occupation

Rabbinical Student

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife Smyra

The journey

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

What is known

Moshe Langer, a Sugihara survivor, received a Sugihara visa which saved his life. He never met Sugihara personally but credited the visa with allowing him to survive the war.

Chiune Sugihara was nothing less than an angel...he saved my life. I can never thank him enough. I received a Sugihara visa, which saved my life. I never met Sugihara, but without that visa I wouldn't have made it through the war.

Where this comes from

• 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 53. Cross-referenced by Mark Halpern, researcher (Aug 2026); archive pass concurs.
• 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 1083); the names closely match this register line — approved by the owner's review, 19 Aug 2026 — the ledger reads: Langer Moses Izaak, WEAVER (tkacz), born 15 June 1912 Wielopole, single; registered 30 July 1941; 17/2 Yulin Road; passport L-61 issued by the Shanghai consulate 26 July 1941.
• 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 53 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 "Langer Mozes Izak". A pencilled note beside it gives this register number, which is how the two records are joined.
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Moses Izaak Langer, 1946: born about 1912, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Franci…
  FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Moses Izaak Langer, born about 1912 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1946 on the Marine Lynx. The register's compiled line gives 1912, and the two are 0 years apart, and the name occurs once on the register. The ship's manifest heading says she sailed from Shanghai, and a passenger born in Poland landing at San Francisco in 1946 from Shanghai is the route's end: the refugees who waited out the war there. So the entry is taken as this person's under the archive's rule of 19 September 2026 for records from the route. The sheet is NARA microfilm publication M1410, film 386, image 589, read by the archive on 20 September 2026.
• JDC Archives, New York, collection AR 33/44 file 53 (the Jewish Community of Kobe's returns to the JDC, 1941; Set I, item 00761) — Set I pp. 24–32 — April 1941 (and a May continuation sheet)
  He left Japan for Shanghai on the Nagasaki Maru, from Nagasaki, 24 April 1941 (the Jewish Community of Kobe's list of refugees who left Japan for Shanghai, April 1941 (JDC Archives, AR 33/44 file 53)). The list reads: "Langer Moses — Polish — Nagasaki". (Nagasaki Maru, Nagasaki, 24 April 1941, Shanghai.)
• UNRRA China Office, S-1132-0000-0181, registration of Polish rabbis and rabbinical students, their lists and sailings, Shanghai 1945–1946 (UN Archives, AG-018-001)
  The Agudath Israel organisation of refugees from Poland in Shanghai listed him among its members on 24 December 1945: Moses Izaak Langer, born in 1912 in Wielopole, Polish passport No. L-61/1/30/41 issued on 26 July 1941, with his wife and their daughter born in Shanghai. The UNRRA China Office kept the list with its 1946 registration of Polish rabbis and rabbinical students. (United Nations Archives, UNRRA China Office records.)
• La-karov ve-la-rachok, 11 April 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 11 April 1946, lists Moses Izaak Langer: born 1912 at Wielopole, a weaver, arrived in 1941 from Vilnius; the year agrees with the age the register gives, the name occurs once on the register, and an arrival in Shanghai in 1941 from Lithuania is the Sugihara route itself, so the archive attaches it under its rule of 19 September 2026 (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
• Sugihara Virtual Exhibit — Solly Ganor
• Shanghai Ledger, page 136 (left): entries 1082-10… — Savoy Hotel), Wagowski Artur (b. 1905 Ulm, on a Brussels-consulate passport), Tyk Szoel (b. 27 Nov 1917 Nowe Miasto). Library of Congress digitisation of the Polish Consulate's register
• Shanghai Ledger, page 136 (right): entries 1082-1… — Savoy Hotel), Wagowski Artur (b. 1905 Ulm, on a Brussels-consulate passport), Tyk Szoel (b. 27 Nov 1917 Nowe Miasto). Library of Congress digitisation of the Polish Consulate's register

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