Leon Ilutowicz

Visa no. 819 · Kaunas, 2 August 1940

Leon Ilutowicz received transit visa no. 819 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 2 August 1940. The register records lawyer, aged 26.

Documents

Document — Leon Ilutowicz — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Flight and Rescue (exhibition book, 2001), page reproducing Leon Ilutovich's certificate of Polish citizenship (USHMM, gift of Rebeka Ilutovich) and Foreign Minister Matsuoka's cable of 16 August 1940

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded: Polnisch
Age in 1940: 26
Occupation: Lawyer

The journey

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

What is known

The article notes competing narratives about who first approached Sugihara. One version states it was a lawyer named Leon Ilutovicz, rather than Nathan Gutwirth, who first requested a transit visa from Sugihara in Kaunas in August 1940.

A multi-page passport containing a Sugihara-style transit visa for the journey through Japan to Suriname, Curacao and other Dutch colonies, alongside British transit visas issued at the British Consulate General in Kobe, Japan, and other consular stamps. The document belonged to Rebeka Ilutovich.

Leon Ilutovich obtained a Curacao visa on July 31, 1940, and two days later received a Japanese transit visa stamped by Chiune Sugihara allowing travel through Japan to Suranam, Curacao and other Netherlands colonies. The document, heavily stamped with Soviet, Lithuanian, British, Egyptian, and Japanese consular endorsements, traces his transit route through multiple countries as he fled Europe, including additional British consulate visas issued in Kobe, Japan, and further authorizations for travel to Palestine.

It was not Nathan Gutwirth but a lawyer named Leon Ilutovicz who first approached Sugihara.

TRANSIT VISA Seen for the journey through Japan to Surinam, Curacao and other Netherlands' colonies Consulat du Japon a Kaunas BRITISH CONSULATE GENERAL, KOBE, JAPAN This Visa is no guarantee of leave to land

Seen for the journey through Japan (to Suranam, Curacao and other Netherlands colonies.) 1940 VIII . 2 This Visa is-no guarantee of leave to land. La validit\u00e9 du visa est \u00e9tendue... jusqu'au 30 aout que le visa britannique reste valable pendant quinze jours apr\u00e8s la date mentionn\u00e9e ci-haut.

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 2451, Leon Ilutowicz, born 1914 at Odesa, who came from Warszawa; the year agrees with the register's compiled age, and the town with what the archive already holds for this line.
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 119 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: born 1914 at Odesa, Polish; relatives abroad: an uncle, Bernard Elitow, 337-341 Sommerville Avenue, Sommerville, Massachusetts.
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…
The Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 27, born at Odessa, a lawyer, who arrived in Japan from Vilnius on 14 February 1941.
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 1293) — the consulate's register of Polish citizens who reached the city, 1934-1943 — the ledger reads: Ilutowicz Leon, office clerk, born 8 April 1914 Odessa, single; registered 20 November 1941; 171 Muirhead Road; passport issued by the Polish Embassy in Tokyo 19 September 1941 on a Kaunas certificate of 7 March 1940.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database — the Flight and Rescue electronic dataset (source 20725): USHMM's own transcription of the Kaunas register, 2,140 persons with citizenship, visa type, iss…
USHMM Flight and Rescue dataset: arrived in Japan 14 Feb 1941 (line 819)
Certificate of Polish citizenship of Leon Ilutovich, shown open as a single sheet in a museum display, with the whole of his route entered on it. It carries the declaration of the Netherlands Consulate at Kaunas of 31 July 1940 that no e…
The display names the sheet as Leon Ilutovich's certificate of Polish citizenship, and the Japanese transit visa entered on it is dated 2 August 1940 - the issue date the register records for this entry, agreeing exactly. The later endorsements on the same sheet, a British visa at Kobe for travel to Palestine and an Egyptian authorisation of May 1941, differ from the onward destination of Australia noted in the register, and are worth weighing against it.
La-karov ve-la-rachok, 31 March 1946 — the Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
The Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai, printed by the Jewish Agency Search Bureau's bulletin La-karov ve-la-rachok on 31 March 1946, lists Leon Ilutowicz: born 1914 at Odessa, a lawyer, arrived from Vilnius; the year, the town and the trade agree with the 1940 Vilna refugee list, the Kobe Jewish community's refugee register, the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
Jane Marie Law (Cornell University), 'Remembering Sugihara, Re-framing Japan in Europe: Holocaust Era Altruism and the Politics of Cultural Memory', Acta Orientalia Vilnensia 7.1–2 (2006), pp. 13–25.
The numbered Sugihara visa list, the page of 2 August 1940 carrying Nos. 795 to 865 (among them No. 805, Szaps Jaskolka), photographed beside a ruler.
The passport pages of Leon and Rebeka Ilutowicz (No. 819): the Sugihara transit visa, British transit visas, and later stamps.
A book page: the cable of Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka in Tokyo to Acting Consul Chiune Sugihara in Kaunas, 16 August 1940, instructing him to issue visas only to refugees who met the entry requirements (Japanese Foreign Ministry, Di…
Certificate of Polish citizenship of Leon Ilutovich, shown open as a single sheet in a museum display, with the whole of his route entered on it. It carries the declaration of the Netherlands Consulate at Kaunas of 31 July 1940 that no e…
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Flight and Rescue (exhibition book, 2001), page reproducing Leon Ilutovich's certificate of Polish citizenship (USHMM, gift of Rebeka Ilutovich) and Foreign Minister Matsuoka's cable of 16 August…
Shanghai Ledger, page 162 (left): entries 1290-1297, registered 17-20 November 1941 on Tokyo-issued passports of 10-17 November 1941: Kac Aron Mordka (jeweller, b. 4 Aug 1909 Lodz) and Kac Jakub Moszek (b. 15 Dec 1918), Dichter Lejb (sor…

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