In WW2 Europe, escape routes for Jewish refugees were vanishing one by one. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Kaunas in Lithuania became a haven for Jewish families fleeing the brutality of the Nazis. But that safety was short-lived. As the numbers needing to flee the Nazis increased, it became a world of closed borders and reluctant embassies. Yet, against all odds, thousands of Jews—many from Lithuania—embarked on an extraordinary journey to reach freedom by travelling on the Trans-Siberian Railway, a journey of over 5,700 miles. They travelled from Moscow to Vladivostok, and from there to Kobe, a Japanese port that became, for a brief and miraculous time, a refuge for stateless Jewish refugees.
The Urge to Escape: Kaunas 1940
On June 15, 1940, the Soviet Union invaded Lithuania, following a secret protocol in the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which was a non-aggression treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. One of the Soviet regime’s first targets was the Lithuanian intelligentsia—writers, teachers, clergymen, the military, and civil servants, anyone seen as a threat to Soviet authority or Communist ideology.
Many Jewish people, including recently-arrived refugees, were considered intellectuals, and were under threat of deportation to gulags in the frozen wastes of Siberia. With the USSR enforcing Stalinism and stamping out anything cultural, and with Nazi Germany looming to the west, the Jewish community was cornered. Kaunas, the capital at the time, was among the first cities where people were hanged in plain sight for their beliefs. Kaunas was hastily re-named Kovno and was among the first to succumb to the crushing weight of Soviet control.
Desperation led to thousands queuing outside foreign consulates, hoping for a way out. Only the Dutch and Japanese consuls agreed to help by issuing transit visas to Curacao, a little known Dutch colony. Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese vice-consul in Kaunas was instrumental in providing visas to Jewish refugees. Despite Tokyo’s orders, and at great risk to himself, Sugihara defied protocol and issued thousands of visas, allowing refugees to transit through Japan.
Across Siberia on the Trans-Siberian Express
The Trans-Siberian Railway, a marvel of imperial Russian engineering, was now their only lifeline. After securing visas and Soviet travel documents, most refugees boarded a train from Moscow’s Yaroslavsky Station. From there, refugees made the long journey across the Ural Mountains, sparse Siberian forests, and frozen plains, eventually arriving in Vladivostok, the easternmost city of the USSR.
Joseph Hershkovitz, a Polish yeshiva student, relates his memory of the trip:
We were packed into third-class wagons. The train chugged through an endless wilderness—trees, snow, silence. We were afraid, but we also knew we were alive. Every mile took us further from Hitler.
The transit took ten days, sometimes as long as two weeks, depending on local conditions, before arriving at Vladivostok. Some refugees were waylaid in Novosibirsk or Khabarovsk, where train connections broke down or bureaucracy delayed their passage.
A Sea Crossing to Japan
Once in Vladivostok, the journey was far from over. Refugees had to board a ferry across the Sea of Japan, a treacherous and expensive final leg in a sea full of mines. The main port of entry in Japan was Tsuruga. Japan showed a surprising degree of compassion on their arrival. In Kobe, Jewish organizations and the small Japanese-Jewish community mobilized to assist the exhausted travellers. Most refugees were allowed to disembark, although only temporarily. Japanese authorities required proof of onward passage—often to the United States, Canada, or Palestine—and limited their stay to two weeks.
Leo Melamed, later a prominent American financial businessman, was only a child when he arrived with his family in 1941. He recalled:
Kobe was heaven after the train. We were given shelter, food. I remember the taste of fresh bread, the smell of the sea. For a few months, we were no longer refugees—we were people again.
Local residents, Buddhist monks, and Jewish aid groups helped settle families into temporary lodging. The Jewish Joint Distribution Committee worked with local Japanese officials to organize meals, medical care, and onward travel. The community even rented a house for Polish yeshiva students, including the Mir Yeshiva, one of the few religious schools to survive the Holocaust.
Nazi Pressure on Japan
At its peak in 1941, over two thousand Jewish refugees were living in Kobe. Shabbat services were held, children studied in makeshift classrooms, and newspapers were written and published in Yiddish and Polish. However, Japan’s alliance with Nazi Germany meant that the situation grew increasingly tense. Under pressure from Germany, in mid-1941, Japanese authorities began relocating the refugees from Kobe to Shanghai, in Japanese-occupied China, where an established Jewish ghetto awaited.
While life in Shanghai was harsh, the refugees were spared the tragic fate of European Jews. I found this crossing of continents fascinating and the refugee journey from Kaunas to Kobe is the major theme of Last Train to Freedom, a WW2 novel set on the Trans-Siberian Express.
Deborah Swift is the author of twenty historical novels, seven of which are set in WW2. Her novel Past Encounters is the winner of the BookViral Millennium Award, and her Renaissance novel The Poison Keeper was recently optioned for TV. Last Train to Freedom is published by HQDigital.
Read more about the history of Last Train to Freedom:
Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) provide detailed archives of Sugihara’s visas and the refugees’ journeys.
Escape to Shanghai by James R. Ross (Memoir)
The Sugihara Story by Yukiko Sugihara, the consul’s wife, offers insight into his role in helping refugees escape.
It is also documented in The World That Was: Lithuania, edited by Rabbi Avraham Fishelis, which tells how the entire yeshiva—over 300 scholars—made the journey via the Trans-Siberian.
