Lejzer Soroczkin received transit visa no. 520 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 31 July 1940. The register records rabbinical student, aged 25.
What the register records
Nationality as recorded
Polnisch
Age in 1940
25
Occupation
Rabbinical Student
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list
wife Chassia (18)--Telshe Yeshiva
The journey
Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; registered in Kobe for Palestine.
Travelled with, and never given a number
Chassia — wife, aged 18
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
Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin and his family, appearing on the Sugihara list, fled the war and escaped to Mandatory Palestine. In Israel he helped found the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah and headed the Chinuch Atzmai. He died in Israel in 1966, survived by five sons who became prominent rabbis.
This is an auction lot page from Bidspirit (Kedem auction house) titled 'Sugihara Visa - Life Saving.' The page indicates the sale of an item related to a Chiune Sugihara life-saving transit visa, but the accessible content does not contain the specific visa details, holder name, or family story.
A Polish citizenship certificate (Zaswiadczenie / Certificat) issued by the Polish Legation in Kowno (Kaunas, Lithuania) to Lejzer Soroczkin, born 1915 in Zdzieciol, Nowogrodek district. The certificate was issued in lieu of a passport to confirm Polish citizenship and enable emigration abroad. It bears stamps including what appear to be Kaunas/Lithuania consular seals.
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… 248, 1915 Zdzieciol; father
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.614, age 26, b. Zdzieciol, Yeshiva, from Vilno
hunt/jdc_shanghai: JDC Shanghai migration file: SOROCZKIN LeJzer JDC Archives, New York collection AR3344, 'Complete Shanghai Migration Files' (NY_AR3344_00014), page 136: SOROCZKIN LeJzer, file no. 7601. Match: register No.520 'Lejzer oroczkin' (repaired: Lejzer Soroczkin), and the register independently records this person as reaching Shanghai. Both name parts
