Josef Kamieniecki

Josef Kamieniecki received transit visa no. 463 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 31 July 1940. The register records journalist, aged 33.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

33

Occupation

Journalist

The journey

Reached Japan; registered in Kobe for Australia.

What is known

This is the back of Jozef Kamieniecki's certificate of nationality, covered with the visas and transit stamps that document his escape route from Lithuania during WWII. It bears a Curaçao entry visa (No. 1579) issued in Kaunas on 30 July 1940 by Dutch acting consul Jan Zwartendijk, a handwritten Japanese transit visa issued by Chiune Sugihara at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas, a Manchukuo (Manchurian Empire) entrance visa (No. 1100) issued through the Manchurian embassy in Japan, and multiple transit stamps from Dairen (Kwantung), Wafangdian (Manchukuo), and Tsuruga port in Japan, showing the long overland and sea journey he took to escape Europe.

This composite document shows a Dutch 'end visa' issued by Consul Jan Zwartendijk in Kaunas on 20 July 1940, stating that no entry visa was actually required for Curaçao and Surinam, followed by a Japanese transit visa stamped by Chiune Sugihara authorizing travel through Japan toward those Dutch colonies. Together with a Japanese entrance/transit stamp (No.1100) and Manchurian and other transit chops, these stamps trace the bureaucratic path used by Josef Kamieniecki to flee Nazi-occupied Europe via the Trans-Siberian railway and Japan.

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…
  #3062, b.1893 Bialystok, from Warszawa
• The Kobe relatives list — refugees at Kobe in 1941 recorded with their relatives abroad. Seventy-six pages in numbered sheets (LIST No. 7, No. 16 and others), each line giving a name, age, birthplace, occupation and citizenship, and then…
  No 131; Warszawa; Polish; brother in law Zwi Siretkin 23 Lifton Garden London N.9.
• 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…
  33, b. Warsaw, Journalist, arr. 2.2, from Kovno
• Andrew Jakubowicz blog "Persona non grata — twelve minutes about Sugihara and me" (Apr 2016): Josef Kamieniecki Curaçao sheet No.1579 — use authorised by his son Michael Kamm (via Andrew Jakubowicz, 11 Aug 2026)
  Andrew Jakubowicz, 'Persona Non Grata: twelve minutes about Sugihara and me' (30 April 2016) - a survivor family's own account. Josef Kamieniecki, a journalist who married the author's aunt and reached Australia in January 1947. Match: register No.463 Josef Kamieniecki, visa 31 July 1940, age 33, oc
• A document held in the archive's files
• Prof. Andrew Jakubowicz (University of Technology Sydney), email of 11 August 2026 to the archive, introduced by Arlette Liwer-Stuip — four answers: (1) Josef Kamieniecki's Curaçao sheet may be used, authorised by his son Michael Kamm; J…