Eliasz Kupinski received transit visa no. 874 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 2 August 1940. The register records farmer, aged 43.
What the register records
Nationality as recorded
Polnisch
Age in 1940
43
Occupation
Farmer
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list
brother of #873, wife Slawa (38)
The journey
Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; registered in Kobe for Canada.
Travelled with, and never given a number
Slawa — wife, aged 38
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.
What is known
This is a Polish Legation certificate (Zaswiadczenie/Certificat) issued in Kaunas confirming that Eliasz Kupinski (born 1897, Warsaw), a farmer, and his wife Slawa Kupinska (born 1902, Warsaw) are Polish citizens, accompanied by their two children (a daughter, Sara, born 1931, and a son, Isaar, born 1933). The document bears a Japanese transit visa (No. 2345) seen for the journey through Japan to Suriname, Curacao and other Netherlands' colonies, dated 2 August 1940, signed by the Japanese consul in Kaunas (Sugihara).
Eliasz Kupinski, born 1897 in Warsaw and by profession a farmer (rolnik/agriculteur), received a Polish Legation certificate in Kaunas dated 2 August 1940, accompanied by his wife Slawa (born 1902, Warsaw) and their two children, daughter Sura (born 1931) and son Eliasz (born 1933). The Dutch consul issued a Curacao endorsement (No. 2345) and the Japanese consulate in Kaunas granted a transit visa on 2 August 1940 for the journey through Japan to Surinam, Curacao and other Netherlands colonies.
A 1998 letter from Clare Cronin of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to Dr. Jan Zwartendyk regarding color xeroxes of two newly found Curacao visas with high numbers, 2342 and 2345, both dated August 2, 1940. The letter notes these were the only two pages found and that there were no other visas apart from the Dutch and Japanese.
Where this comes from
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… #393, 44, b. Warsaw, Farmer, arr 14.2, from Vilno
hunt/jdc_shanghai: JDC Shanghai migration file: KUPINSKI Samuel JDC Archives, New York collection AR3344, 'Complete Shanghai Migration Files' (NY_AR3344_00014), page 164: KUPINSKI Eliasz, file no. 7063. Match: register No.874 'Eliasz Kupinski', and the register independently records this person as reaching Shanghai. Both name parts agree. NOTE: the index carries
Curaçao visa No. 2345 — the highest-numbered Zwartendijk visa known to survive, issued at Kaunas on 2 August 1940 to Eliasz Kupiński and his family. Photographed on the Polish Legation certificate that carries it: the certificate itself,… The Polish Legation certificate carrying this family's photographs bears a Curaçao notation of 2 August 1940 — the same day as the register's visa for this line — and names him with his wife and their two children. The archive already held this Curaçao number from five other sources; this is a photograph of the document itself, reaching the archive from the consul's son through Akira Kitade. Whether Samuel Kupinski, on the same page of the register and the same date, is the relative the certificate does not name is untested.