Abraham Swislocki

Visa no. 61 · Kaunas, 27 July 1940

Abraham Swislocki received transit visa no. 61 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 27 July 1940. The register records journalist, aged 34.

Documents

Document — Abraham Swislocki — Shanghai Ledger, page 159 (left): entries 1266-1273 — Kornblum Mojzesz, Feldman Icko, Swislocka Masza (journalist, b. 1909 Warsaw), Lieberfreund Georg/Jerzy (engineer, b. 1912 Wysoki Brzeg), Steiner Lewi, Lewinson Josel (rabbi, b. 1890 Choroszcz), BALGLEJ Chaim (b. 1904 Brzesc, married), Rybak Samuel — registrations of 7-10 November 1941. Library of Congress digitisation of the Polish Consulate's register

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded: Polnisch
Age in 1940: 34
Occupation: Journalist
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list: husband of #62, child Norbert (4)

The journey

Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; registered in Kobe for Palestine.

Travelled with, and never given a number

Norbert — child, aged 4

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

This heavily-stamped document traces the escape route of the Swislocki family from Lithuania in the summer of 1940. Jan Zwartendijk, acting Dutch consul in Kaunas, issued a 'Curaçao visa' declaring that no entry visa was required for Dutch possessions such as Curaçao, which then allowed Chiune Sugihara to stamp a Japanese transit visa for the family's journey through Japan. Subsequent British transit visas issued in Kobe, Japan (for Palestine, Australia, and British India) and an Egyptian transit visa extension from Tokyo in 1941 show the family's continuing attempts to reach a final destination, ultimately aiming for Palestine. The document was preserved by the family, later identified w…

This composite sheet documents the multi-stage transit journey of a holder identified as A. Abraham Swislocki, who obtained a transit visa through the Japanese Consulate at Kaunas (seal 'Consulat du Japon, Lithuanie' and 'Consul du Japon à Kaunas' visible) around July 1940, consistent with Sugihara-issued transit visas of that period. The passport page also bears British Transit Visas issued at the British Consulate General in Kobe, Japan (Nos. 14486, 16121, 16525) in 1941 permitting transit toward Palestine via the Union of South Africa and Ceylon, an Egyptian Consulate General transit visa issued in Tokyo (No.36) valid from May 1941 and later extended to December, and a Palestine entry…

Curaçao visa signed by Jan Zwartendijk for Abraham Swislocki, his wife, and son, entered in their certificate of Polish citizenship. Le consulat de Pays-Bas à Kaunas déclare par la présente que pour l'admission d'étrangers au Surinam, au Curaçao et autres possessions néerlandaises en Amérique, un visa d'entrée n'est pas requis. Transit Visa 27/vii 1940 — seen for the journey to America via Curaçao through Japan, Consul du Japon à Kaunas. La validité du visa est prolongée jusqu'au 30 décembre à condition que le visa britannique pour entrer en Palestine reste valable quinze jours à la date mentionnée ci-haut. Tokio, le 27 mai 1941.

Consul du Japon à Kaunas BRITISH TRANSIT VISA. H.B.M. CONSULATE GENERAL, KOBE, JAPAN. No.14486 Date 3rd Sept 1941. Valid for the sole purpose of unavoidable transit through Union of South Africa and Ceylon on a direct journey to Palestine. CONSULAT GENERAL ROYAL D'EGYPTE A TOKIO. Visa de transit No.36 Date de la validite 1.5.1941. The visa for Palestine No.16076 issued at the British Consulate-General, Kobe, on the 26... Visa for Palestine authorized by the Government of Palestine to enter Palestine, 9/1/41, letter issued by [Chief Secretary], Government of Palestine.

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…
The 1940 Vilna refugee list has, at entry 5355, Abraham Swisłocki, born 1906 at Warsaw, who had come from Warsaw; the year agrees with the register's age and Warsaw agrees with the archive's other records.
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…
Entry 623 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 35, born at Warsaw, a journalist, who travelled from Vilnius.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database — the Flight and Rescue electronic dataset (source 20725): USHMM's own transcription of the Kaunas register, 2,140 persons with citizenship, visa type, iss…
USHMM Flight and Rescue dataset: arrived in Japan 13 Feb 1941 (line 61)
"California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Abraham Swislocki, 1947: born about 1906, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Francis…
FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Abraham Swislocki, born about 1906 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1947 on the General M. C. Meigs. The register's compiled line gives 1906, and the two are 0 years 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 390, image 190, read by the archive on 20 September 2026.
HaBoker, 7 May 1941 (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
Abraham Swislocki, a Warsaw journalist, sat on the General Zionists' party council for Congress Poland; HaBoker of 7 May 1941, printing a letter from Kobe, names him among the movement's members then in Japan (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
Arolsen Archives, Bad Arolsen, collection 6.3.3.1 (AJDC tracing cases, Berlin): Abraham Swislocki's tracing case, document 106813011 (its pages 106813012–106813016)
In April 1947 the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee's tracing office in Berlin opened an inquiry for Abraham Swislocki, born at Warsaw on 27 April 1906, whose last known address was Shanghai; the request was forwarded to China, and the case was closed in 1949. Tracing case, AJDC Berlin, held by the Arolsen Archives, Bad Arolsen (ITS Digital Archive).
Owner's ephemera collection (photographed Jul 2026): Flight and Rescue catalog pages (Soltz cert — Mrs. Shmuel Soltz, Israel; Nowogrodzki spread — full name Markus-Chaim, US non-immigrant visa No.4 of 20 Jul 1940, Soviet visa 114477, Sea…
A book page: the 'Curaçao visa' signed by Jan Zwartendijk for Abraham Swislocki (No. 61), his wife and son, entered in their certificate of Polish citizenship, lent by Dr Norbert I. Swislocki, New York; and the desk set Zwartendijk used…
A book page reproducing in colour the full sheet of Abraham Swislocki's certificate of Polish citizenship (No. 61), with Zwartendijk's desk set.
Oral history interview with Norbert Swislocki — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Flight and Rescue collection (RG-50.494.0011)
Shanghai Ledger, page 159 (left): entries 1266-1273 — Kornblum Mojzesz, Feldman Icko, Swislocka Masza (journalist, b. 1909 Warsaw)… — registrations of 7-10 November 1941. Library of Congress digitisation of the Polish Consulate's register
Arolsen Archives, Bad Arolsen, collection 6.3.3.1 (AJDC tracing cases, Berlin): Abraham Swislocki's tracing case, document 106813011 (its pages 106813012–106813016)

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