Aleksander Hafftka

Visa no. 459 · Kaunas, 31 July 1940

Aleksander Hafftka received transit visa no. 459 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 31 July 1940. The register records lawyer, aged 50.

Documents

Document — Aleksander Hafftka — A document held in the archive's files

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded: Polnisch
Age in 1940: 50
Occupation: Lawyer
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list: child Sylvia (9), husband of #2093

The journey

Reached Japan; registered in Kobe for USA.

Travelled with, and never given a number

Sylvia — child, aged 9

The register recorded visa holders. It did not reliably record the wives and children who travelled on somebody else’s visa, so these people have no entry of their own and cannot be searched for. Where the archive has recovered a name, it is here.

What is known

Sylvia Smoller, referenced in a December 6, 1993 Japan Times article, left Lithuania carrying a Sugihara visa and headed for the United States via Japan. The narrative notes that Sugihara's visa recipients fled from Poland via Lithuania to Vladivostok on the Trans-Siberian Railway and then by ship to Tsuruga, Japan, arriving safely in Kobe.

Dr. Sylvia Smoller is described as a 'Sugihara Survivor' interviewed in the documentary, one of the Jewish refugees saved by Chiune Sugihara's transit visas.

An open passport showing a Curacao/Netherlands transit endorsement issued at Kaunas on 29 July 1940, signed by the acting Dutch consul (Jan Zwartendijk). The left page bears the name Aleksander Hafftka, the notation 'Weg-Visas' and the number 1362. The right page contains a Japanese transit visa stamp from the Japanese Consulate at Kaunas indicating travel through Japan onward to Canada via England.

Sylvia Smoller of The Japan Times article left Lithuania carrying a Sugihara visa and headed for the United States via Japan their long, hard escape from Poland via Lithuania to Vladivostok on the Trans-Siberian Railway and finally by ship to Tsuruga, Japan

Aleksander Hafftka Weg-Visas 1362 Kaunas 29 juillet 1940 Consul des Pays-Bas a.i. TRANSIT VISA to Canada / England

Where this comes from

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 71 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 51, born at Czestochowa, a lawyer, who arrived in Japan on 13 January 1941.
US arrival manifest: Aleksander Hafftka, Seattle, 1941
"Seattle Passenger Lists", FamilySearch, entry for Aleksander Hafftka, 1941. Ship: Hie Maru. Matched from the Hie Maru's Polish-born passenger list (87 people). Register No.459 'Aleksander Hafftka' records age 50; the manifest gives born 1891, arriving 1941. | Confirmed by the family, 6–9 Sep 2026: his daughter states the family landed at Seattle from Japan and has sent her photograph aboard the Hie Maru (Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, née Hafftka).
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 459)
Oral history interview with Sylvia Smoller (née Hafftka) — USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, interview 12663. Catalogue: born Feb 24 1932, Warsaw (Warsaw, Poland); born Warsaw 24 Feb 1932; fathe… — the interviewee may be living
USC Shoah Foundation VHA interview 12663: Sylvia Smoller (née Hafftka) — daughter of the visa holder — gave a testimony (catalogue: born Feb 24 1932, Warsaw (Warsaw, Poland)); born Warsaw 24 Feb 1932; father Alexander Hafftka, No.459
Oral history interview with Sylvia Smoller (née Hafftka) — second interview — USC Shoah Found… — transcript read 24 Aug 2026 (streams online): a JOINT CONVERSATION with fellow survivor Berl Schor (No. 77), interviewer Stephanie Nyombayire
USC Shoah Foundation VHA interview 58074: Sylvia Smoller (née Hafftka) — second interview — daughter of the visa holder — gave a testimony (catalogue: born [Feb 24, 1932], Warsaw (Warsaw, Poland)); born Warsaw 24 Feb 1932; father Alexander Hafftka, No.459
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…
His daughter Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, née Hafftka writes that his wife was OLA Hafftka, register No. 2093 - the line the register types as 'Hela' - and that Samuel Haftka (No. 1303) was his half-brother, Paulina (No. 1302) being Samuel's wife rather than his own. She says her family spelled its name HAFFTKA, with two f's, and that her uncle's branch spelled it with one. Samuel and Paulina, she writes, went on from Japan to Shanghai, and Paulina afterwards reached the United States. Given by Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, 4 September 2026.
Sylvia Hafftka, aged nine, aboard the Hie Maru from Japan to Seattle, 1941 — photograph from her own collection, sent by Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, née Hafftka, 9 September 2026
Her photograph of herself aboard the Hie Maru, 1941, and her statement (6 and 9 September 2026) that the family landed at Seattle from Japan. Given by Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, née Hafftka.
r/HaShoah (Asahi Shimbun 2016): Hafftka family passport renewals page — Warsaw Starosta Grodzki 1935-36, British Chargé d'Affaires renewal 23 Nov 1939, HAFTKA ALEKSANDER stamps
A page of the Hafftka family passport, reproduced by the Asahi Shimbun in 2016 and posted to r/HaShoah, carries renewal stamps of the Warsaw city starosty for 1935–36 and a renewal at Kaunas on 23 November 1939 by the British chargé d'affaires for Polish interests, with the stamp HAFTKA ALEKSANDER. The given name agrees, and the identity page of the same passport gives his birth as 1892 at Częstochowa: the register has Częstochowa, and an age of 50 against the 48 that 1892 would make him.
"Washington, King, Seattle, Passenger Lists, 1890-1957", FamilySearch — index entry for Aleksander Hafftka, 1941: born about 1891, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1383 (passenger and crew lists of vessels arriving at S…
FamilySearch's index of the Seattle passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Aleksander Hafftka, born about 1891 in Poland, arriving at Seattle in 1941. The register's compiled line gives 1890, 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.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Daily Bulletin, 5 June 1964, "Alexander Hafftka, Jewish Historian and Sociologist, Dead; Was 72"
Aleksander Hafftka died in June 1964, aged 72, after a long illness. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency's bulletin of 5 June 1964 remembered him as a Jewish historian and sociologist who before the war had advised the Polish Government on minority affairs and the Interior Ministry on Jewish affairs, co-published the Polish-Jewish Encyclopedia as its political editor, and wrote *Anti-Semitism in the German Republic*. The archive takes the bulletin to be about this man: a lawyer on the register, aged 50 in 1940, which fits a death at 72 in 1964 within two years, and the Seattle arrival sheet on this page carries his age and his wife beside him.
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 Aleksander Hafftka, 50, born in Czestochowa, landing at Seattle from Yokohama on the Hie Maru on 29 March 1941 with his wife Ola and their daughter, on American visitor's visas issued in Moscow on 30 December 1940. A later note records the family's admission as immigrants at Rouses Point, New York, on 28 October 1943.
Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem — the card file of Jewish refugees from Poland who found refuge in various countries, 1939–1941
Yad Vashem's card file of Jewish refugees from Poland who found refuge in various countries, 1939–1941, has a card for Alexander Haftka, born in 1892, of Warsaw, who was in Wilno during the war; the year and the town agree with this register line. Credit: Yad Vashem Archives.
The passport of Aleksander Hafftka (No. 459), open at the page with his Sugihara transit visa of 1940, No. 1362, photographed on display.
All the pages of Aleksander Hafftka's passport (No. 459), photographed spread by spread, with the Sugihara visa page marked.

and 24 further records, shown on the full entry.

Open this entry in the full register →