Frydchaj Hersz Menachem

Frydchaj Hersz Menachem received transit visa no. 407 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 30 July 1940. The register records carpenter, aged 33.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

33

Occupation

carpenter

What is known

This document combines a Japanese transit visa stamped by the Japanese Consul at Kaunas on 31 July 1940 with a Dutch (Curacao) visa declaration issued by the Netherlands Consulate at Kaunas on 25 July 1940 (No. 1005). It permitted the holder, Menachem Mendel Frydman, to travel through Japan to the Dutch colonies of Surinam and Curacao, which did not require an entry visa.

This document is a genuine Sugihara transit visa (No. 1005) issued at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania, permitting travel through Japan en route to Curaçao or Suriname. It relies on a Dutch consular declaration, signed by Jan Zwartendijk (acting Dutch consul), stating that no entry visa was actually required for those Dutch colonies, a legal fiction that enabled Sugihara to issue the Japanese transit visa. The Japanese transit visa stamp is dated 1940 VII 31, about six days after the Dutch consulate's declaration dated 25 July 1940.

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…
  1356, Lomza, 1907, from Warszawa
• A document held in the archive's files
• Facebook: certificates of Jankiel-Mendel Grzebiułka (b. 24 XII 1904 Przasnysz, widower, with son Chaim Jehuda) and Hersz-Menachem Frydchaj (b. 30 III 1904 Łomża, carpenter; = register No.407, record 297)
• STAMP FORENSICS reference — GENUINE Sugihara visa stamp (comparison pair, left)