Josif Chajtowicz

Josif Chajtowicz received transit visa no. 636 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 1 August 1940. The register records printer, aged 21.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

21

Occupation

Printer

The journey

Reached Japan; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for 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 931, Josef Chajtwic, born 1920 at Nowogródek, who came from Międzyrzec; the year agrees with the register's compiled age, and the town with what the archive already holds for this line.
• 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 25 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 21, born at Nowogrodek, a printer.
• Haaretz, 2 February 1942, and HaTzofe, 3 February 1942 (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
  In February 1942 Josef Chajtowicz was among the immigrants on their way from India to the Land of Israel listed by Haaretz (2 February 1942) (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press). The archive counts this as a corroboration under its rule of 19 September 2026: the list is a record of the Sugihara route itself, the Jewish Agency's own roll of the Kobe refugees sent on through Bombay; the full name occurs once on the register; and India in the winter of 1941–42 is where that road ran. No second personal fact has yet been found.
• HaBoker, HaTzofe, Omer and Haaretz, 19 September 1941 (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
  Josif Chajtowicz reached Bombay on the way from Japan to Palestine. On 19 September 1941 the Tel Aviv papers HaBoker, HaTzofe and Omer printed a telegram from the committee of Polish-Jewish refugees listing 'these Polish refugees, immigrants to the Land of Israel', whose address at that time was Cook's office in Bombay; the name is on it. The archive attaches it because the list is one of the refugees on the Sugihara route, the name occurs once on the register, and the place and date fit (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).

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