Szoel-Leopold Bluman

Szoel-Leopold Bluman received transit visa no. 516 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 31 July 1940. Aged 35 in 1940.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

35

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

husband ff #515

The journey

Reached Japan; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for New Zealand.

What is known

Leopold Bluman, an uncle of George Bluman, received Sugihara transit visa (S visa #516) in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1940, saving him from being murdered as a Polish Jewish refugee.

an uncle (Leopold Bluman, S visa #516)

Where this comes from

• "List of persons arriving on route to New Zealand" — the arrival roster for the sailing from Japan, September 1941: 33 typed names, from Dr George Bluman’s own marked-up cop… — September 1941, not July; he had misread his own handwriting.
  Named on the list of persons arriving on route to New Zealand, sailing from Japan in 1941. Named on the arrival list for New Zealand.
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Leopold Bluman, 1947: born about 1906, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Francisco)…
  FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Leopold Bluman, born about 1906 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1947 on the Marine Phoenix. The register's compiled line gives 1905, and the two are 1 year apart, and the name occurs once on the register. The sheet names the ship but its heading could not be read for the port she sailed from, so this is held as a lead until it can. The sheet is NARA microfilm publication M1410, film 394, image 402, read by the archive on 20 September 2026.
• 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…
  The Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad has, at entry 26, Szoel Leopold Bluman, aged 35, born at Warsaw, a worker, Polish, with a friend in New York and a cousin in Buffalo. Sugihara's ledger lost the first letter of his given name; the list has it in full.
• 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 8221, Szoel Leopold Bluman, born in 1906 at Warszawa, who came from Warszawa. Danuta Lapacz Bluman is the next entry.
• Papers Past — the National Library of New Zealand's digitised newspapers (Evening Post, the Dominion, the Press, Auckland Star and others, 1942–1955)
  A possible record, not yet confirmed as this person: the Press (Christchurch) of 30 April 1942 and the Marlborough Express of 29 April 1942, read on Papers Past on 20 October 2026, report a Leopold Bluman, a Pole with experience of fish-canning in Europe, giving evidence for a company in formation, Herring Products Ltd, at an appeal against the refusal of a licence. The name and nationality match; the reports give no age, birthplace or wife.
• https://personal.math.ubc.ca/~bluman/ChiuneSugiharaLists.html

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