Josef Kaplan

Josef Kaplan received transit visa no. 700 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 1 August 1940. Aged 22 in 1940.

Documents

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

22

The journey

Reached Japan; registered in Kobe for USA.

What is known

This is a Lithuanian 'Leidimas / Sauf-Conduit' (safe-conduct document issued in lieu of a passport for travel abroad) for Josef Kaplan. It lists his birthplace as Zelwa (the clerk's hand long misread as 'Zebra'), birthdate 27 December 1918, nationality undetermined, profession student, and domicile Vilnius. The document bears a photograph, his signature, and various stamps.

Josef Kaplan of Zelwa was nineteen, the youngest child, freshly out of the Wołkowysk gymnasium with no prospects, when he and a friend slipped across the Lithuanian border in December 1939. He learned in a Vilna yeshiva while the family's world closed behind him, obtained Leidimas A Nr.07278 in Kaunas, register visa No.700 (1 Aug 1940), and was through Japan and gone before 1940 ended — too early for any of the Kobe relief lists. His daughter Rena Kaplan Klein corrected the record eighty-six years later: the town was Zelwa, not "Zebra," and the year was 1918.

The family provided full-colour scans of both documents in August 2026. The safe-conduct shows the eighteen-year-old — nationality recorded as "undetermined" — photographed in Vilnius; the visa sheet shows Sugihara's visa written out entirely by hand, "Seen for the journey to U.S.A. through Japan", red-underlined, beside the American quota visa No.3814 issued on 31 August 1940, one number after Szaps Jaskolka's. The Fukui prefecture stamp fixes his landing in Japan: PERMITTED TO TRANSIT, 9 October 1940.

LEIDIMAS SAUF-CONDUIT au lieu d'un passeport pour l'etranger Nom Kaplan Prenom Josef Lieu de naissance Zelwa [clerk's hand, historically misread as 'Zebra'] Domicile Vilnius

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 7696, Josel Kaplan, born 1918 at Zelwa, who had come from Zelwa; the year agrees with the register's compiled age.
• Josef Kaplan — full escape dossier (Leidimas/Sauf-Conduit, Sugihara transit visa 1 Aug 1940, Soviet transit visa, US immigration visa No.3814) — family scan re-sent by daughter Rena Kaplan Klein, Jul 2026, with corrections
  The Lithuanian safe-conduct, Serija A No. 07278, issued in place of a passport, is made out to Kaplan Josef and gives his birth as 27 December 1918 at Żelwa, and his residence as Vilnius. A birth in December 1918 makes him twenty-one in the summer of 1940, one year off the register's age of twenty-two. The register carries fifteen people of this surname and he is the only Josef among them, so the given name and the birth year together separate him from the rest. (Corrected 15 September 2026: this note formerly gave the birth date as 27 April 1918 and said it agreed with the register's age; the permit reads 27 XII 1918 on both its Lithuanian and its French lines.)
• "Washington, King, Seattle, Passenger Lists, 1890-1957", FamilySearch — index entry for Josef Kaplan, 1940: born about 1918, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1383 (passenger and crew lists of vessels arriving at Seattle…
  FamilySearch's index of the Seattle passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Josef Kaplan, born about 1918 in Poland, arriving at Seattle in 1940. The register's compiled line gives 1918, and the two agree. 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.
• Manifest of alien passengers, SS Hikawa Maru, sailing from Yokohama December 1940 (day not legible), arrived Seattle 5 Jan 1941 (US National Archives, M1383, roll 258; read on FamilySearch's copy)
  The National Archives' Seattle passenger list (FamilySearch's copy) shows Josef Kaplan, 22, a student born in Zelwa, landing at Seattle from Yokohama on the Hikawa Maru on 5 January 1941 with an American quota visa issued in Tokyo on 19 December 1940. His father was still in Zelwa; he was going to an uncle, Barney Kaplan, in Brooklyn.
• Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem — the card file of Jewish refugees from Poland who found refuge in various countries, 1939–1941
  Yad Vashem's card file of Jewish refugees from Poland who found refuge in various countries, 1939–1941, has a card for Josef Kaplan, born 1918, of Zelwa, who was in Wilno during the war; the year and the town agree with this register line. Credit: Yad Vashem Archives.
• Josef Kaplan — full escape dossier (Leidimas/Sauf-Conduit, Sugihara transit visa 1 Aug 1940, Soviet transit visa, US immigration visa No.3814) — family scan re-sent by daughter Rena Kaplan Klein, Jul 2026, with corrections
• A document held in the archive's files
• A document held in the archive's files
• Kaplan family collection, courtesy Rena Kaplan Klein — colour scans (Aug 2026): Leidimas Serija A Nr.07278, Josef Kaplan, b. 27 Dec 1918 Zelva, schoolboy, nationality "indéterminée", domicile Vilnius, issue… — his crossing date into Japan
• The HIKAWA, arriving at Seattle in 1940: list or manifest of alien passengers, the sheet that names Josef Kaplan — US National Archives, Record Group 85 (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arrivi…
• The HIKAWA, arriving at Seattle in 1940: the continuation sheet, with the relatives named and the destinations, for the sheet that names Josef Kaplan — US National Archives, Record Group 85 (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Passe…

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