Mojzesz Mowszowski received transit visa no. 659 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 1 August 1940. The register records office employee, aged 63.
What the register records
Nationality as recorded
Polnisch
Age in 1940
63
Occupation
Office employee
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list
father of #1109
The journey
Reached Japan; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for South Africa.
What is known
A Polish citizenship certificate (Zaswiadczenie/Certificat, Nr. M-157) issued by the Polish Legation in Kaunas on 4 July 1940 for Mojzesz Mowszowski, born 1 September 1877 in Warsaw, a widower and office employee. Issued in lieu of a passport to enable travel abroad, it bears stamps from the British Legation in Lithuania and appears connected to the Japanese consulate in Kaunas (Sugihara transit route).
This document contains a Japanese transit visa stamp 'Seen for the journey through Japan (to Suranam, Curacao and other Netherlands' colonies)' issued by the Consul of Japan at Kaunas, dated 1940-08. It bears the Curacao endorsement number 1520 for holder Mojzesz Mowszowski, signed by the Dutch acting consul at Kaunas (Jan Zwartendijk) on 29 July 1940. Additional Japanese entry-permit and Yokohama Specie Bank Kobe branch stamps indicate travel through Japan in early 1941.
This page shows a British Visa No. 1598Z issued at the British Consulate General in Kobe, Japan on 15 April 1941, valid for a single journey to the Union of South Africa (linked to Immigration Permit No. 80). The refugee (catalogued here as Mojzesz Mowszowski) traveled from Kobe through the Straits Settlements (Singapore & Penang, stamped 11 May 1941) and the Portuguese colony of Mozambique via Lourenco Marques (7 June 1941) en route to Johannesburg, reporting at Cape Town on 15 July 1941. The routing through Kobe is consistent with escape from Lithuania via the Trans-Siberian route.
The Kobe relatives list — refugees at Kobe in 1941 recorded with their relatives abroad. Seventy-six pages in numbered sheets (LIST No. 7, No. 16 and others), each line giving a name, age, birthplace, occupation and citizenship, and then… 182; Bialystok; son-Mow N.-25 Walestr Cape Tawn Afrika; son L.Newszowski-Fertstr 70 Belawaio S.Rodesia Afrika
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… No 483, 64, Warsaw, Rabbi, 2.2, Vilno
Certificate of Polish citizenship No. M-117, issued to Mojzesz Mowszowski on 4 July 1940 by the Representation of the Polish Republic at the British Consulate in Kaunas and signed by Consul Preston, reproduced with its reverse on a page… The certificate names Mojzesz Mowszowski and gives his birth as 1 September 1877 at Warsaw - he turned 63 that September, the age the register records for 1940. His employment is entered as office assistant, and the register records him as an office employee. The Japanese transit visa on the reverse is dated 1 August 1940, which is the issue date the register gives for this entry.
A document held in the archive's files
A document held in the archive's files
A document held in the archive's files
A document held in the archive's files
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…
Mojżesz Mowszowski certificate (No.659) — front + reverse with Zwartendijk 29 Jul and Sugihara visa 1 Aug 1940, cropped from book p.300