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.
Documents
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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.
TRANSIT VISA. Seen for the journey through Japan (to Suranam, Curacao and other Netherlands' colonies). 1940 VII 31. Consul du Japon a Kaunas. No. 1005 Le Consulat des Pays-Bas a Kaunas declare par la presente que pour l'admission d'etrangers au Surinam, au Curacao et autres possessions neerlandaises en Amerique un visa d'entree n'est pas requis. Kaunas, 25 Juillet 1940
Le Consulat des Pays-Bas à Kaunas déclare par la présente que pour l'admission d'étrangers au Surinam, au Curaçao et autres possessions néerlandaises en Amérique un visa d'entrée n'est pas requis. TRANSIT VISA. Seen for the journey through Japan (to Suranam, Curaçao and other Netherlands' colonies.) 1940 VII 31. Consul du Japon à Kaunas.
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 1356, Hersz-Menachem Frydchaj, born 1907 at Łomża, who came from Warszawa; the year agrees with the register's compiled age, and the town with what the archive already holds for this line. - Casablanca of the North: Kaunas 1939–1940 (exhibition catalogue), Linas Venclauskas (compiler), Sugihara Diplomats for Life Foundation, Kaunas, 2018
The catalogue of the Sugihara House exhibition (Linas Venclauskas, Sugihara Diplomats for Life Foundation, 2018) shows Hersz-Menachem Frydchaj's Kaunas identity document of 13 December 1939, which on its reverse carries Jan Zwartendijk's Curaçao declaration of 25 July 1940 and Chiune Sugihara's transit visa of 31 July 1940. The document is held by the Lithuanian Central State Archives. - The visa page of Menachem Hersz Frydchaj (No. 407): Zwartendijk's Curaçao declaration No. 1005 of 31 July 1940 and the Sugihara transit visa of 31 July 1940; the page torn at the right.
- 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)
- Reverse of Hersz Menachem Frydchaj's certificate of Polish citizenship, his name written on the declaration: Jan Zwartendijk's Curaçao declaration, numbered 1005 on the document, Kaunas, 25 July 1940, and Chiune Sugihara's transit visa o…