Aleksander Hafftka received transit visa no. 459 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 31 July 1940. The register records lawyer, aged 50.
What the register records
Nationality as recorded
Polnisch
Age in 1940
50
Occupation
Lawyer
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list
child Sylvia (9), husband of #2093
The journey
Reached Japan; registered in Kobe for USA.
Travelled with, and never given a number
Sylvia — child, aged 9
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
Sylvia Smoller, referenced in a December 6, 1993 Japan Times article, left Lithuania carrying a Sugihara visa and headed for the United States via Japan. The narrative notes that Sugihara's visa recipients fled from Poland via Lithuania to Vladivostok on the Trans-Siberian Railway and then by ship to Tsuruga, Japan, arriving safely in Kobe.
Dr. Sylvia Smoller is described as a 'Sugihara Survivor' interviewed in the documentary, one of the Jewish refugees saved by Chiune Sugihara's transit visas.
An open passport showing a Curacao/Netherlands transit endorsement issued at Kaunas on 29 July 1940, signed by the acting Dutch consul (Jan Zwartendijk). The left page bears the name Aleksander Hafftka, the notation 'Weg-Visas' and the number 1362. The right page contains a Japanese transit visa stamp from the Japanese Consulate at Kaunas indicating travel through Japan onward to Canada via England.
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… No.71, age 51, b. Czestochowa, Lawyer, arr 13.1.
US arrival manifest: Aleksander Hafftka, Seattle, 1941 "Seattle Passenger Lists", FamilySearch, entry for Aleksander Hafftka, 1941. Ship: Hie Maru. Matched from the Hie Maru's Polish-born passenger list (87 people). Register No.459 'Aleksander Hafftka' records age 50; the manifest gives born 1891, arriving 1941. | Confirmed by the family, 6–9 Sep 2026: his daughter states the family landed at Seattle from Japan and has sent her photograph aboard the Hie Maru (Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, née Hafftka).
Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, née Hafftka, daughter of ALEKSANDER HAFFTKA, register No. 459, writing to this archive on 4 September 2026 - correcting her mother's entry. Her mother was OLA Hafftka, not Hela: the register's No. 2093 is type… His daughter Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, née Hafftka writes that his wife was OLA Hafftka, register No. 2093 - the line the register types as 'Hela' - and that Samuel Haftka (No. 1303) was his half-brother, Paulina (No. 1302) being Samuel's wife rather than his own. She says her family spelled its name HAFFTKA, with two f's, and that her uncle's branch spelled it with one. Samuel and Paulina, she writes, went on from Japan to Shanghai, and Paulina afterwards reached the United States. Given by Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, 4 September 2026.
Sylvia Hafftka, aged nine, aboard the Hie Maru from Japan to Seattle, 1941 — photograph from her own collection, sent by Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, née Hafftka, 9 September 2026 Her photograph of herself aboard the Hie Maru, 1941, and her statement (6 and 9 September 2026) that the family landed at Seattle from Japan. Given by Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, née Hafftka.
r/HaShoah (Asahi Shimbun 2016): Hafftka family passport renewals page — Warsaw Starosta Grodzki 1935-36, British Chargé d'Affaires renewal 23 Nov 1939, HAFTKA ALEKSANDER stamps A page of the Hafftka family passport, reproduced by the Asahi Shimbun in 2016 and posted to r/HaShoah, carries renewal stamps of the Warsaw city starosty for 1935–36 and a renewal at Kaunas on 23 November 1939 by the British chargé d'affaires for Polish interests, with the stamp HAFTKA ALEKSANDER. The given name agrees, and the identity page of the same passport gives his birth as 1892 at Częstochowa: the register has Częstochowa, and an age of 50 against the 48 that 1892 would make him.