Anatol Swieca

Anatol Swieca received transit visa no. 748 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 1 August 1940. The register records lawyer, aged 34.

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

34

Occupation

Lawyer

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife Tesfila (38), son Andrzej (5)

The journey

Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; registered in Kobe for Australia.

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Tesfila — wife, aged 38
• Andrzej — son, aged 5

The register recorded visa holders. It did not reliably record the wives and children who travelled on somebody else’s visa, so these people have no entry of their own and cannot be searched for. Where the archive has recovered a name, it is here.

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 5225, Anatol Swieca, born 1906 at Warsaw, who had come from Warsaw; the year agrees with the register's age and Warsaw agrees with the archive's other records.
• 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…
  Entry 295 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: aged 35, born at Warsaw, a lawyer; relatives abroad: an uncle, Petshaft, Passaic, New Jersey; an aunt, Eisenberg, Tel Aviv.
• The Shanghai Ledger — register of Polish citizens kept by the Consulate of Poland in Shanghai, 1934-1943 (original at the Archives of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ref. 43/2003; digitised by the Library of Congress; indexed as…
  Registered with the Polish Consulate in Shanghai (ledger entry 1075); the names closely match this register line — approved by the owner's review, 19 Aug 2026 — the ledger reads: Swieca Anatol, ADVOCATE (adwokat), of Warsaw, married; registered 26 July 1941; 1269 Rue Lafayette; on a Warsaw passport of 12 August 1937 (Bu-5347/37) extended by the Polish Embassy in Tokyo 29 May 1941, valid to 29 May 1942.
• JDC Archives, New York, collection AR 33/44 file 53 (the Jewish Community of Kobe's returns to the JDC, 1941; Set I, item 00761) — Set I pp. 5–7 — "List… — "List of persons who left Japan for Shanghai in the month of July 1941", Nos. 1–15
  He left Japan for Shanghai on the Taiyo Maru, sailing from Kobe on 18 July 1941 (the Jewish Community of Kobe's list of persons who left Japan for Shanghai, July 1941 (JDC Archives, AR 33/44 file 53)). The list reads: "Swieca Anatol (Taiyo Maru, 18th)". (Taiyo Maru, Kobe, 18 July 1941, destination Shanghai.)
• UNRRA China Office, S-1132-0000-0181, registration of Polish rabbis and rabbinical students, their lists and sailings, Shanghai 1945–1946 (UN Archives, AG-018-001)
  In March 1946 the American Joint Distribution Committee's migration department in Shanghai processed Anatol Swieca, of 540/9 Ward Road, for Australia, with a contact in South Yarra, Melbourne. (United Nations Archives, UNRRA China Office records.)
• Find a Grave memorial for Anatol Swieca, Melbourne Chevra Kadisha Cemetery, Springvale (plot 20 M 4), with the stone photographed
  Anatol Swieca reached Australia after the war — the Joint processed him in Shanghai for Melbourne in March 1946 — and lived in Melbourne for almost fifty years. He died on 14 January 1995 (13 Shevat 5755), aged 89, and is buried in the Melbourne Chevra Kadisha cemetery at Springvale. A death at 89 in 1995 fits the register's 34 in 1940, and the Joint's Shanghai record of him bound for Melbourne, already on this page, is the route to the same city.
• Melbourne Chevra Kadisha — the burial records of the Melbourne Jewish community (mck.org.au)
  The Melbourne Chevra Kadisha's burial records give the date: Anatol Swieca died on 14 January 1995, aged 89, and was buried the next day at the community's cemetery at Springvale, the grave his page already shows from its photograph. The age gives 1906, exactly the year of birth the register's compilers recorded for him, and on the register the surname belongs to his family and nobody else. Read in the Chevra Kadisha's online burial records, October 2026.
• 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 Anatol Swieca, born in 1906, of Warsaw, who was in Wilno during the war; the year and the city agree with this register line. Credit: Yad Vashem Archives.
• Shanghai Ledger, page 135 (left): entries 1074-1081, registered 26 July 1941: Schaja Raisa (b. 25 Dec 1900 Tomsk… — the last four all lodging at 54 Chusan Road, house 17. Library of Congress digitisation of the Polish Consulate's register
• Shanghai Ledger, page 135 (right): entries 1074-1081, registered 26 July 1941: Schaja Raisa (b. 25 Dec 1900 Toms… — the last four all lodging at 54 Chusan Road, house 17. Library of Congress digitisation of the Polish Consulate's register

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