KOBE--It’s been nearly 80 years since a “visa for life” helped young Jewish refugee Berl Schor escape from the horrors of Nazi Germany and make his way to this western port city. 

Schor, now 93, never forgot the people who welcomed him and his relatives in Kobe and gave them a temporary safe haven before they could make their way to New Zealand.

An information board was installed here in November to mark the former site of the Jewish Community of Kobe (Kobe Jewcom), which provided shelter to the refugees, so the kindness of the residents will be remembered by future generations. 

“I can still remember and cherish the hospitality of the Kobe people who received us with a smile,” Schor, who resides in Israel, told an audience via a video phone call during the unveiling ceremony for the signboard here on Nov. 19.

“I wish to thank the people of Kobe for providing us with a safe home in those difficult days during World War II.”

The signboard was set up by local volunteers in a corner of Kobe’s posh Kitano district, known for its historic Western-style foreigners’ residences, as a memento to the interactions the Jews had with the local community.

‘JAPAN’S SCHINDLER’

In the midst of World War II, a large number of Jewish refugees who had fled persecution by Nazi Germany crowded the Japanese Consulate in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas in 1940, requesting transit visas to Japan.

Vice Consul Chiune Sugihara (1900-1986) issued visas to them at his own discretion in contradiction of instructions from the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

Sugihara, known as “Japan’s Schindler,” issued 2,139 of what later came to be known as “visas for life.” Some estimate the visas saved the lives of 6,000 people, including family members of their direct recipients.

The refugees took the Trans-Siberian Railway before arriving in Japan at Tsuruga Port in Fukui Prefecture, and they eventually left for the United States, Australia and elsewhere, in most cases from Kobe Port.

Among the beneficiaries of the “visas for life” were Schor and his six relatives, who arrived in Kobe from Poland in March 1941. A house on Yamamoto-dori, a street lined with foreigners’ residences, was allotted to Schor’s family, complete with seven mattresses.

“Finding a temporary refuge in beautiful Japan was more than what we could ask for,” Schor said.

He became good friends with a Japanese teen who was three years his senior. His friend had an air rifle, with which the two boys practiced target shooting together in a little grove of trees.

“He did not understand a single word of all the languages I understood, and I did not understand a single word of Japanese, and yet, we got on together,” Schor said.

He also remembers how he found a seriously injured dog near his home and took him to a veterinary surgeon. Schor was short of money, but when he offered what little small change he had on him, the veterinary surgeon said that was enough and treated the dog for him.

Schor said he took good care of the dog while he was in Kobe.

Schor left with his family for New Zealand four months after arriving in Japan and has never returned to the country since. But he said he has never forgotten the days he spent in Kobe.

‘OPEN HEART’

The information board, which stands by the side of a stone wall on a narrow lane in the Kitano district, explains, in Japanese, English and Hebrew, how and why the Jewish refugees came to Kobe and how citizens received them.

“The Japanese people in Kobe opened their hearts and accepted the Jewish refugees from the mid-1940s to the end of 1941,” it says.

The signboard also presents photos showing Jewish refugees together with Japanese.

It is believed some 4,600 of the Jews who had arrived in Japan on the “visas for life” stayed temporarily in Kobe. They were housed in hotels, unoccupied foreigners’ residences and elsewhere for up to a year until it was decided where they were going to seek asylum, officials said.

Kobe Jewcom provided housing and food to the refugees and advised them on seeking asylum.

Jews have lived for more than a century in Kobe, whose port was opened to foreign vessels around the time the Tokugawa Shogunate was ending. Most of the Jewish residents had come from the Middle East to engage in foreign trade and other businesses.

Takayoshi Iwata, a board member of the nonprofit “Kobe foreign settlement study council,” showed in a joint study with coworkers that Kobe Jewcom had been founded by the 1930s at the latest.

Kobe Jewcom, which doubled as a synagogue, was likely an indispensable meeting place of Jews for helping each other as they lived away from home and in accordance with the teachings of Judaism.

FADING MEMORIES

The history of Jews in the district was fading into oblivion, officials said.

The Western-style building that housed Kobe Jewcom’s office was burnt down in an air raid in 1945. A stone wall measuring about 2 meters tall and 25 meters long still remains by the side of the likely site of the building, which is now occupied by a school building of the Kobe Institute of Computing.

Iwata, a former elementary school principal, began studying the history of the local community in earnest after he retired.

Starting about 10 years ago, he began poring over historical materials, such as aerial photos taken by U.S. forces to make air raids and telegrams addressed to Kobe Jewcom, until he finally confirmed the site actually hosted the Kobe Jewcom office.

Kenji Fukuoka, 53, managing director of an educational corporation that operates the Kobe Institute of Computing, cooperated with the installation of the information board after learning about the history.

Schor was scheduled to come to Japan to attend the signboard’s unveiling ceremony before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Iwata, who had lung cancer, died suddenly at age 79 in early November, only days before the ceremony.

Fukuoka said he is feeling impatient as there are fewer and fewer survivors who remember that time.

“I want more people to learn about the episode of Kobe’s history that Iwata uncovered,” he said. “I also hope that living witnesses to the time will come forward and share their accounts.”