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At the beginning of the 1940s, a vast number of Polish Jews fled from Lithuania to Japan and Shanghai thanks to the transit visas issued by the Japanese consul in Kaunas, Chiune Sugihara. In the Far East, they received help from Tadeusz Romer, Polish ambassador to Japan, avoiding the status of "stateless people." When in exile, their Polish citizenship enabled them to get diplomatic and financial help. By combining the diplomatic archives and the memoirs and oral stories of the survivors, the article presents the everyday life of the Polish Jews in East Asia, which was under the Japanese control at that time. It also shows the role of the Polish diplomats and government in providing the best possible help to the Polish citizens.

When in the early 1940s a vast number of war refugees - mainly Jews, reached (via Japan) Shanghai, they got stuck in the city due to the eruptionof the Pacific War. While being mostly Polish citizens, they depended on the diplomatic care of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Tokyo, led by the Ambassador Tadeusz Romer and after its closure - the Polish Consulate in Shanghai, where the ambassador was moved. The diplomats became engaged in the organisation of refugee groups, livelihoods and visas necessary for their evacuation. The aim of this article is to characterise the political and social groups of Polish citizens, who benefited from the Polish consulate’s help and were therefore registered in the diplomatic records.

Antrojo pasaulinio karo pabėgėlių, ypač žydų, tarp jų ir Lenkijos žydų, gelbėjimo problema yra iki šiol aktuali ir plačiai diskutuojama. Ji tebekelia klausimus, kas ir kodėl gelbėjo. Ši problema neatsiejama nuo Lenkijos žydų bei lenkų, kurie buvo išgelbėti nuo Vokietijos nacių ir Rusijos sovietų ir kurie pabėgo nuo mirties ar tremties į Sibirą per Kauną į Japoniją. Prieš prasidedant karui Kaune buvo du konsulai, gana gerai žinomi žydų gelbėtojai, Chiune Sugihara iš Japanijos ir Janas Zwartendijkas iš Olandijos. Straipsnio autorė atkreipia dėmesį į mažiau žinomą pabėgėlių gelbėjimo atvejį, susijusį su Tadeuszu Romeriu, Lenkijos ambasadoriumi Japanijoje (1937–1941), o kiek vėliau specialiosios misijos ambasadoriumi Šanchajuje (1941–1942), kuris taip pat įdėjo pastangų gelbėdamas pabėgėlius. The issue of the rescue of war refugees, especially Jews, including Polish Jews, during World War II, as well as the questions “Who saved who?” and “Why did they save each other?” are still very important and widely discussed. The above mentioned issues apply to the Polish Jews and Poles, saved from Nazi Germans and Soviet Russians, who managed to avoid death or exile in Siberia by escaping through Kaunas in Lithuania, as well as to the role of Japan in these events. Among the relatively well-known rescuers of Jews acting in Kaunas at the beginning of the war there were two consuls, Sugihara Chiune from Japan and Jan Zwartendijk from the Netherlands. The author of the present article focuses on a lesser known stage in those efforts to save the people from exile or death - on the role that Tadeusz Romer, as the Polish Ambassador to Japan (1937-1941), and later as the Ambassador in Shanghai on a special mission (1941-1942), played in these efforts.