Oskar Schenker received transit visa no. 476 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 31 July 1940. The register records mechanic, aged 40.
What the register records
Nationality as recorded
Polnisch
Age in 1940
40
Occupation
Mechanic
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list
brother of #477
The journey
Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for USA.
What is known
An open passport belonging to Oscar Schenker showing multiple visa stamps, including a Curacao-type transit visa reading 'Seen for the journey through to the Netherlands' colonies via Japan.' The passport contains Japanese transit stamps and other consular visas (including references to Jamaica and Chile), indicating an escape route through Japan.
A Polish Legation certificate (Zaświadczenie/Certificat) issued in Kaunas for Oskar Schenker, born 1900. The document bears the stamp of the Polish Legation (Poselstwo Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej w Kownie) and includes a photograph of the holder.
Oskar Schenker, a Polish Jewish judge from Krakow, fled with his family to Lwów after the German invasion in September 1939, then went to Vilna with his brother to obtain transit visas for Japan. He received a transit visa stamped by Chiune Sugihara in Kaunas in July 1940 and arrived in Japan in October 1940, later sailing from Yokohama aboard the M.S. Tatuta Maru on 6 March 1941 with an American visa. His son Alexander and wife Gizela were deported to a Soviet labor camp in Siberia in 1940, later surviving the war in Stalinabad (Dushanbe, Tajikistan) and immigrating to the United States in 1947.