Ola Hafftka

Ola Hafftka received transit visa no. 2093 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 21 August 1940. The register records journalist, aged 37.

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polish

Age in 1940

37

Occupation

Journalist

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife of #459

The journey

Reached Japan; 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 2238, Ola Haftka, born 1903 at Zarki, who came from Warszawa; the year agrees with the register's compiled age.
• The JEWCOM register — the refugee register kept by the Refugee Committee of the Jewish Community of Kobe (Ashkenazim) at No. 6 Yamamoto-dori, 1-chome, whose cable address was 'JEWCOM Kobe'. Eighty-four pages on the committee's own printe…
  Entry 72 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 38, born at Jarki.
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database — the Flight and Rescue electronic dataset (source 20725): USHMM's own transcription of the Kaunas register, 2,140 persons with citizenship, visa type, iss…
  USHMM Flight and Rescue dataset: arrived in Japan 13 Jan 1941 (line 2093)
• Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, née Hafftka, daughter of ALEKSANDER HAFFTKA, register No. 459, writing to this archive on 4 September 2026 - correcting her mother's entry. Her mother was OLA Hafftka, not Hela: the register's No. 2093 is type…
  Amended 13 September 2026: until this date the entry was headed "Haftka Hela", as the consulate's register spells it; it now reads Ola Hafftka on her daughter's word. | Her daughter Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller , née Hafftka, writes that her mother's name was OLA, not Hela as the register's typed line reads, and that the family spelled the surname HAFFTKA with two f's. Two wartime Kobe lists already on this entry read the name the same way - 'Haftka Ola', aged 38, born Zarki - so the register's 'Hela' appears to be a misreading of Ola. Given by Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, 4 September 2026.
• "Washington, King, Seattle, Passenger Lists, 1890-1957", FamilySearch — index entry for Ola Hafftka, 1941: born about 1904, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1383 (passenger and crew lists of vessels arriving at Seattle)…
  FamilySearch's index of the Seattle passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Ola Hafftka, born about 1904 in Poland, arriving at Seattle in 1941. The register's compiled line gives 1903, and the two are 1 year apart. The name occurs once on the register, and a Polish-born passenger 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.
• Manifest of alien passengers, SS Hie Maru, sailing from Yokohama (date not legible), arrived Seattle 29 Mar 1941 (US National Archives, M1383, roll 260; read on FamilySearch's copy)
  The National Archives' Seattle passenger list (FamilySearch's copy) shows Ola Hafftka, 37, born in Zarki, landing at Seattle from Yokohama on the Hie Maru on 29 March 1941 with her husband Aleksander and their daughter. A later note records her admission as an immigrant at Rouses Point, New York, on 28 October 1943.
• The HIEMARU, arriving at Seattle in 1941: list or manifest of alien passengers, the sheet that names Aleksander Hafftka — US National Archives, Record Group 85 (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels…
• The HIEMARU, arriving at Seattle in 1941: the continuation sheet, with the relatives named and the destinations, for the sheet that names Aleksander Hafftka — US National Archives, Record Group 85 (Immigration and Naturalization Service)…

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