Jakow Tunkiel

Jakow Tunkiel received transit visa no. 864 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 2 August 1940. Aged 20 in 1940.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

20

The journey

Destination given in the Kitade-Bluman list: Israel.

What is known

Yaakov Banai (Tunkel), a member of Betar and founding member of the Irgun in Poland, studied law at Vilnius University. In 1941, following the Soviet invasion and shortly before the German invasion of Lithuania, he obtained a Sugihara visa and made his way to Israel via Turkey with other members of Betar.

Banai obtained a Sugihara visa and made his way to Israel via Turkey with other members of the Betar. TUNKIEL, Jakow

Where this comes from

• Wikipedia, 'Yaakov Banai' — read 2 October 2026.
  Wikipedia's article on Yaakov Banai, later commander of Lehi's fighting unit, says he was born Yaakov Tunkel at Baranowicze in March 1920, studied law at Vilnius University in 1939–40, and 'obtained a Sugihara visa and made his way to Israel via Turkey with other members of the Betar'. The article gives no source for that sentence and dates the journey to 1941; the register has the visa on 2 August 1940. It is taken as this line's because the surname occurs once on the register, the given name and the age of 20 agree, and the article itself states the visa.
• 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 7273, Tunkiel Jakub, born 1920 at Baranowicze, who came from Baranowicze; the year agrees with the age the register gives, and the town with what the archive already holds.
• 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.
• Chiune Sugihara Facts - The Sugihara Curaçao Visas

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