Teodor Lazdun

Teodor Lazdun received transit visa no. 928 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 3 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student - telshe yeshiva, aged 23.

Documents

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

23

Occupation

Rabbinical Student - Telshe Yeshiva

The journey

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

What is known

German-born Tuvia Lasdun was a student of the Telshe Yeshiva in Telsiai, Lithuania, whose uncle Rabbi Eliyohu Meir Bloch was one of its principals. Using a variant of a Sugihara-issued document, he escaped via the Trans-Siberian Railroad through Japan to Shanghai. Through the Red Cross he sought news of his family, learning in 1945 that relatives (Charles, Fanny, Josef, Sophia, and Sulamit Lasdun) had been deported to Auschwitz in November 1942. After the war he made his way from China to the United States, joined the relocated Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland, and later settled in Washington Heights, NY.

Japanese stamped (but unsigned) Polish document granting the bearer safe passage through Japan and on toward overseas Dutch territories. knowing that Sugihara himself permitted blank visas to contain his official stamp, this is a variant of some sort. Lasdun, Charles, 7-6-20, Rotterdam with Fanny, Josef, Sophia, Sulamit on November 11, 1942 deported to the East (Auschwitz). one of the few Lithuanian Yeshiva students who managed to survive the Nazi onslaught of terror and murder, and with dwindling options, discover an escape-route, via the Trans-Siberian Railroad to the Far East.

Where this comes from

• The Jewish Press, 'A Saintly Sofer: Rabbi Yosef Lasdun Passes Away at 62', 6 June 2018 — read in the Internet Archive's copy, 2 October 2026.
  A 2018 obituary of Rabbi Yosef Lasdun in The Jewish Press says his father, Rav Toviyo Lasdun, was 'a talmid chacham from Telshe, Lithuania' who worked with the books of Yeshiva University's library in New York. The surname, the name Tovia, Telshe and the United States all fit this line, but the obituary gives no age and says nothing of the journey, so this is a lead and not an identification.
• List of war refugees in China — Polish Jewish refugees in Shanghai registered with UNRRA, 312 men (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation A… — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, list 48658
  The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration's Shanghai office listed the Polish Jewish war refugees registered with it; the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has indexed the 312 names. Teodor Lazdun is among them. His is the only line of that name on the register, which records him as a Telshe yeshiva student who reached Shanghai, and the list is of exactly that group of refugees.
• UNRRA China Office, S-1132-0000-0181, Mizrachi members list and the United Board of Rabbis' birth-data pages, Shanghai 1945–46 (UN Archives, AG-018-001)
  The United Board of Rabbis and Rabbinical Colleges in Shanghai listed him among its members after the war, born in 1917 in Hamburg. (United Nations Archives, UNRRA China Office records.)
• La-karov ve-la-rachok, 11 April 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 11 April 1946, lists Theodor Lasdun: born 1917 at Hamburg, a yeshiva student, arrived in 1941 from Poland by way of Siberia; the year and the trade agree with the archive's compiled register (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
• Group of nine documents and letters belonging to Yeshiva of Telz student Theodor (Tovia) Lasdun.
• Invaluable/Kestenbaum lot 110 — Theodor (Tovia) Lasdun Telz-Yeshiva documents

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