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.

Documents

Click a document to see it larger.

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…
  The 1940 Vilna refugee list has, at entry 7586, Szmul Shmidman, born 1910, who had come from Mir; the year agrees with the register's compiled age.
• 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
• "Washington, King, Seattle, Passenger Lists, 1890-1957", FamilySearch — index entry for Szmuel Szmidman, 1940: born about 1911, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1383 (passenger and crew lists of vessels arriving at Seat…
  FamilySearch's index of the Seattle passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Szmuel Szmidman, born about 1911 in Poland, arriving at Seattle in 1940. The register's compiled line gives 1910, and the two are 1 year apart. The name occurs once on the register, and a Polish-born passenger landing at Seattle in 1940 fits the route through Japan, so the entry is taken as this person's under the archive's rule of 19 September 2026 for records from the route.
• 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…
• The HEIAN, arriving at Seattle in 1940: list or manifest of alien passengers, the sheet that names Mojsie J Solodownik — US National Archives, Record Group 85 (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels…
• The HEIAN, arriving at Seattle in 1940: the continuation sheet, with the relatives named and the destinations, for the sheet that names Mojsie J Solodownik — US National Archives, Record Group 85 (Immigration and Naturalization Service),…

×