Zorach Warhaftig

Zorach Warhaftig received transit visa no. 455 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 30 July 1940. Aged 34 in 1940.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

34

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

husband of #454, son Emanuel (0)

The journey

Reached Japan; registered in Kobe for Canada.

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Emanuel — son, aged 0

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 lieu of a passport by the Legation of Poland in Kaunas on 16 July 1940 to Zorach Warhaftig, a Polish citizen born 2 February 1906 in Wolkowysk. He was married and worked as a lawyer (avocat). The certificate, stamped by His Britannic Majesty's Legation (charged with protection of Polish interests), authorized travel abroad. Warhaftig was a Polish-Jewish refugee associated with the escape route through Lithuania.

This passport page documents Zorach Warhaftig's escape route. It bears a Curacao endorsement (No. 45) issued by the Dutch Consulate in Kaunas on 24 July 1940 stating no entry visa was required for Surinam, Curacao and other Netherlands possessions in America, plus a Japanese transit visa stamped by the Consulate of Japan in Kaunas (August 1940). Later stamps show a U.S. immigration visa No. 476 issued at Tokyo on 25 February 1941, a Canadian Legation in-transit endorsement (Tokyo, No. 333, 26 May 1941), a medical examination stamp, and admission to the United States at Rouses Point, N.Y. on July 1941. Warhaftig, a prominent religious Zionist leader, ultimately reached the United States an…

This page contains immigration and consular stamps documenting Zorach Warhaftig's travels and entry into North America. It includes a U.S. Immigration Visa No. 1391 issued to Zorach Warhaftig by the American Consul at Montreal, Canada on February 25, 1942 (Polish non-preference quota), Canadian Immigration stamps from Lacolle, P.Q. and Vancouver, B.C. (1941), and a note recording admission at Rouses Point, NY on 2/27/42 for permanent stay. A French consular visa (Londres) is also present.

Where this comes from

• Study of the Mir Yeshiva's wartime displacement — the yeshiva's flight from Poland into Lithuania, its billeting at Keidan and Kedainiai, and its passage through Kobe to Shanghai.
  named in this history of the Mir Yeshiva's escape
• US arrival manifest: Zorach Warhaftig, Seattle, 1941
  "Seattle Passenger Lists", FamilySearch, entry for Zorach Warhaftig, 1941. Ship: Hikawa Maru. Matched from the Hikawa Maru's Polish-born passenger list (162 people, 35 matched). Register No.455 'Zorach arhaftig' records age 34; the manifest gives born 1906, arriving 1941.
• "Washington, King, Seattle, Passenger Lists, 1890-1957", FamilySearch — index entry for Zorach Warhaftig, 1941: born about 1906, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1383 (passenger and crew lists of vessels arriving at Sea…
  FamilySearch's index of the Seattle passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Zorach Warhaftig, born about 1906 in Poland, arriving at Seattle in 1941. The register's compiled line gives 1906, and the two agree. The name occurs once on the register, and a Polish-born passenger landing at Seattle in 1941 fits the route through Japan, so the entry is taken as this person's under the archive's rule of 19 September 2026 for records from the route.
• A document held in the archive's files
• A document held in the archive's files
• A document held in the archive's files
• A document held in the archive's files
• A document held in the archive's files
• A document held in the archive's files
• A document held in the archive's files
• A document held in the archive's files
• A document held in the archive's files
• Zorach Warhaftig - Wikipedia
• EHRI - P.20 - Zorach Warhaftig Archive: Documentation of rescue and aid extended to refugees who escaped from Poland and Lithuania to Japan, 1939-1990

and 12 further records, shown on the full entry.