The Sugihara Visa Archive

Salomon Boruch Szmul

Visa no. 299 · Kaunas, 30 July 1940

Salomon Boruch Szmul received transit visa no. 299 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 30 July 1940. The register records engineer, aged 33.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded
Polnisch
Age in 1940
33
Occupation
Engineer
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list
brother of #27, cousin of #599

The journey

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

What is known

The father of Richard A. Salomon received Sugihara transit visa #299. Richard Salomon, a founder and CEO of Vantage Point Consultants and involved in Holocaust education organizations, speaks about why Sugihara acted as he did. The document is an invitation to a B'nai B'rith International commemorative breakfast program.

Bernard Salomon, a Polish Jew, fled the Nazi invasion after failing to bring his parents to safety, walking 170 miles from Mlava, Poland to Kaunas, Lithuania. Sugihara issued him the 299th exit visa on July 30, 1940, enabling safe passage by train through Siberia and by boat to Kobe, Japan; he later traveled by ship to Shanghai and on to Calcutta, India. Bernard survived the Holocaust but died in 1955 when the author's father was less than 2 years old.

Rick Salomon's father was issued Sugihara transit visa number 299 in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1940, allowing him to flee the Nazis eastward through Soviet territory and Japan. His descendants, including Rick, a co-founder of the Illinois Holocaust Museum, and his children and grandchild, are alive because of Sugihara's actions.

Where this comes from

Open this entry in the full register →