Leo Hanin
Encyclopedia
Leo Hanin was a Zionist activist.

Born into a Jewish family in Vilna (Wilno, Vilnius), then in Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

, he and his family left for Harbin
Harbin
Harbin ; Manchu language: , Harbin; Russian: Харби́н Kharbin ), is the capital and largest city of Heilongjiang Province in Northeast China, lying on the southern bank of the Songhua River...

, Manchuria (northern China), in 1916. There Leo joined a Zionist group and studied Jewish history at a Jewish primary school, and then studied at a Russian secondary school. When Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931, he went to Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...

 where attended a British school, and also served in the Jewish Shanghai Volunteer Corps. He was a leader of Shanghai Betar
Betar
The Betar Movement is a Revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, by Vladimir Jabotinsky. It has been traditionally linked to the original Herut and then Likud political parties of Israel, and was closely affiliated with the pre-Israel Revisionist Zionist splinter group...

, the Revisionist Zionist youth organization.

In 1937, he moved to Kobe
Kobe
, pronounced , is the fifth-largest city in Japan and is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture on the southern side of the main island of Honshū, approximately west of Osaka...

, Japan, to work in a textile firm. The small Jewish community there elected him its honorary secretary. From August 1940 to November 1941 two thousand Polish-Lithuanian Jewish refugees, who were saved from the Holocaust by the Japanese viceconsul in Kaunas
Kaunas
Kaunas is the second-largest city in Lithuania and has historically been a leading centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the biggest city and the center of a powiat in Trakai Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1413. During Russian Empire occupation...

, Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara
Chiune Sugihara
was a Japanese diplomat who served as Vice-Consul for the Japanese Empire in Lithuania. During World War II, he helped several thousand Jews leave the country by issuing transit visas to Jewish refugees so that they could travel to Japan. Most of the Jews who escaped were refugees from...

, arrived into Kobe. The Jewish community helped them by finding homes, donating medical supplies and clothing, and arranging, by the Polish ambassador to Japan Tadeusz Romer
Tadeusz Romer
Tadeusz Romer was a Polish diplomat and politician.He was a personal secretary to Roman Dmowski in 1919. Later he joined the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he served as Polish ambassador to Italy, Portugal, Japan and the Soviet Union...

, their visas so they could stay on in Japan.

In 1942 he returned to Shanghai and spent the rest of the war working there. He emigrated to Israel in 1948 and next moved to the United States in 1972.

He described the Jewish community in Kobe and its activities in a special interview in 1999.

Reference

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