Aleksander Hafftka received transit visa no. 459 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 31 July 1940. The register records lawyer, aged 50.
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.
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… No.71, age 51, b. Czestochowa, Lawyer, arr 13.1.
hunt/familysearch: 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.
Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller (nee Sylvia-Maria 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… His daughter Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller (nee Sylvia-Maria 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.