Berl Schor received transit visa no. 77 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 29 July 1940. The register records scholar, aged 12.
What the register records
Nationality as recorded
Polnisch
Age in 1940
12
Occupation
Scholar
The journey
Reached Japan; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for New Zealand.
What is known
Berl Schor, a Sugihara survivor, described the astonishing fact that about 5,000 Jewish refugees were allowed to leave the Soviet Union. He noted that refugees did not know they were going to Kobe until reaching Vladivostok, where a member of the Jewish Community of Kobe informed them they would travel from Tsuruga to Kobe.
This is a certificate (Zaświadczenie/Certificat) issued by the Polish Legation in Kaunas on 19 December 1939 to Berl Schor, a Polish citizen born 5 November 1927, certifying his Polish nationality in lieu of a passport so that he could travel abroad. The document, part of a larger collection related to Sugihara-era refugees passing through Kaunas, does not itself bear a Sugihara Japanese transit-visa stamp, but reflects the bureaucratic steps Polish-Jewish refugees like Schor took while seeking to escape German-occupied territory via Lithuania.
Beryl (Berl) Schor, identified as survivor No.77, is shown displaying his original Sugihara transit visa documents—including a Dutch 'Curaçao' visa stamp and a Japanese transit visa—to a delegation of Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials at Yad Vashem. The visas, dated around July 1940, trace the route he used to escape Nazi-occupied Europe through Kaunas, Lithuania, via Japan. The post also notes that a street in Netanya, Israel was named after Chiune Sugihara in 2016 in his honor.
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… 241, 1927 Krakow
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.604, age 14, b. Krakow, Scholar, arr 24.2 from Vilno
"List of persons arriving on route to New Zealand" — the arrival roster for the sailing from Japan, September 1941: 33 typed names, from Dr George Bluman’s own marked-up copy (sent 18 Aug 2026). Bluman’s red ticks mark the passengers he… Named on the list of persons arriving on route to New Zealand, sailing from Japan in 1941. Twelve years old; the ledger has him as Berl Schor.
Certificate of Polish citizenship No. S-207, issued to Berl Schor by the Legation of the Polish Republic at Kaunas, at the British Consulate, on 19 December 1939, reproduced on a page of a published Polish account of the Kaunas visas. It… The certificate names Berl Schor and gives his birth as 5 November 1927, which agrees with the register's age of 12 in 1940 - he turned thirteen that November. His occupation is entered as schoolboy, and the register records him as a scholar. The refugee committee's slip printed below it places him at Vilna in December 1939 and gives his number on the committee's rolls.
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…
Berl Schor — Polish Legation certificate Nr. S-294 (19 Dec 1939), cropped from book p.207
Project Interchange / Asia Pacific Institute (FB): Japan MFA officials' delegation at Yad Vashem meets BERYL (BERL) SCHOR, No.77 — the survivor shows his Sugihara transit visas; Netanya's Sugihara street (2016) noted
Berl Schor — Vilna Refugee Aid Committee registration No.11227 (13 Jan 1940), cropped