Leon Ilutowicz received transit visa no. 819 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 2 August 1940. The register records lawyer, aged 26.
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.
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… No 119; 1914 Odesa; Polish; uncle Bernard Elitow, Sommerville Mass 337-341 Sommerville Ave
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… 27, b. Odessa, Lawyer, arr. 14.2, from Vilno
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.