Hersz Pejsak Taca received transit visa no. 599 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 31 July 1940. The register records student, aged 20.
Reached Japan; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for India.
This passport belonged to Hersz Pejsak Taca and bears the Dutch consular endorsement (No. 1180) permitting travel to Surinam, Curacao and other Netherlands possessions in America. It carries Chiune Sugihara's Japanese transit visa issued at Kaunas on 27 July 1940, allowing passage through Japan en route to the Dutch colonies. Additional British visas issued at Kobe (Nos. 16289 and 16358, June-July 1941) permit transit to Palestine, along with an Egyptian consular visa from Tokyo (No. 130, 9 July 1941).
Hersz Taca, a Polish student, held a Polish citizenship certificate issued on 28 November 1939 by the British Consul in Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania. The certificate bears a handwritten Curacao visa dated 27 July 1940 (Zwartendijk) and a stamped Sugihara transit visa dated 31 July 1940. Taca was trying to reach Palestine but ended up spending the war in Calcutta, India. He later donated the collection to the museum under the name Henry Taca.
His certificate of Polish citizenship — a passport substitute — carries the whole road: Zwartendijk's Curaçao declaration No.1180 of 27 July 1940, Sugihara's transit visa four days later, the Japanese landing permit of March 1941, and then the long paper chase out of Kobe: a British visa for Palestine, an Egyptian transit visa from Tokyo, and transit rights through British India and Ceylon "on a direct journey to Palestine". The journey stopped halfway: a Calcutta Aliens Department stamp — Lal Bazar, report within 24 hours — marks where the twenty-year-old student actually landed, and he spent most of the war in Calcutta. Of all the destinations written on the register's papers, his is th…