Oral History

Morton Goldberg describes fleeing from Soviet-occupied Poland to Vilna in 1939

When the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland in September 1939, Martin fled from the Soviet zone of occupied Poland to Vilna. He stayed there for about nine months and then moved to a small town about two hours from Vilna. The Soviets occupied Lithuania in 1940. Using forged identity documents, Martin obtained a visa for transit through Japan. He left Lithuania, traveling east along the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok. There he boarded a ship for Japan. Martin remained in Japan until the fall of 1941, when Japanese authorities required Jewish refugees with only temporary residence permits to relocate to Shanghai in Japanese-occupied China. He remained in Shanghai for the rest of the war, and immigrated to Palestine in October 1947.

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