Israel Spira

Israel Spira received transit visa no. 96 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 29 July 1940. The register records lawyer, aged 34.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

34

Occupation

Lawyer

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife Felicja (32), son Ludwik (6)

The journey

Reached Japan; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for Australia.

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Felicja — wife, aged 32
• Ludwik — son, aged 6

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.

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…
  5441, Wieliczko 1906, from Krakow
• 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…
  229-231, 1906 Wieliczka, wife and son; cousin Braczewski N.Y.