Szmul Szmidman

Szmul Szmidman received transit visa no. 658 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 1 August 1940. The register records mir yeshiva, aged 30.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

30

Occupation

Mir Yeshiva

What is known

Szmul Szmidman, a student at the Mir Yeshiva, received Sugihara transit visa No. 658, which allowed him to escape Lithuania during the Holocaust. His great-grandchildren, siblings Elisheva and Akiba Zahtz of Los Angeles, visited the Sugihara House museum and were photographed at the Wall of Survivors holding a copy of the handwritten visa. The family has preserved the original visa as well as an audio recording of Szmul recounting his survival story, and they have promised to donate copies to the museum; the visit was covered in an interview with the Yomiuri Shimbun.

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…
  7586; 1910; Mir
• hunt/familysearch: US arrival manifest: Szmuel Szmidman, Seattle, 1940
  "Seattle Passenger Lists", FamilySearch, entry for Szmuel Szmidman, 1940. Ship: Heian Maru. Matched from the Heian Maru's Polish-born passenger list (198 people, of whom 57 matched the register). Register No.658 'zmul zmidman' records age 30; the manifest gives born 1911, arriving 1940. Confi
• Sugihara House (FB): siblings Elisheva & Akiba Zahtz (Los Angeles) at the Wall of Survivors — great-grandchildren of SZMUL SZMIDMAN No.658, Mir student; family preserves the HANDWRITTEN VISA and an AUDIO RECORDING of Szmul telling his st…