POLISH REFUGEE

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23411, 19 August 1941, Page 4

POLISH REFUGEE

STOWAWAY FROM JAPAN

DETECTED AT SYDNEY

(0.C.) SYDNEY, August 11. A Pojish refugee, Hersch Rosenberg, 23-year-old shop assistant, from Warsaw, who stowed away on the Japanese liner Kasima Mam when it left Kobe (Japan) on July 6, was not discovered until the ship Berthed in Sydney last Saturday. For 34 days he hid on the ship, evading customs officials and boarding officers at Manila and Davao (Philippine Islands). He was found by Sydney customs officers after 53 Polish refugees on the ship had been assembled in the ship’s smoke-room for customs and passport inspection. When a customs official told, officers on the ship that he had found a man who said he had stowed away at Kobe, they refused to believe him. Japanese officers held an inquiry which lasted an hour before they were convinced that Rosenberg was a stowaway. As the ship was berthing, the customs officers checking passports of the 53 Polish immigrants found that Rosenberg did not have one. His only identification was a registration permit issued by Soviet officials after the Russian occupation of Lithuania in 1939. The Consul-General for Poland, Dr. L. Noskqwski, was called. Rosenberg said; “I could not stay in Japan any longer. I knew that only a certain number of permits had been issued for people to enter Australia, but I hoped the Australian Government would have pity if I got this far.” Through Dr. Noskowski, Rosenberg told the Sunday “Telegraph”: “1 climbed on the ship and hid in a lifeboat the day it was sailing. I lay there three days, then went to a cabin and hid under a bed. I mingled with the other Polish passengers, and they soon accepted me as a normal passenger. Then 1 found there was a spare bunk in a cabin shared by two countrymen, so I moved in there. From that time 1 lived as any of the others. I just said I didn’t like going to the table for my meals, and somebody always brought me food. The other passengers didn’t know that I had stowed away. I did not tell anyone. They didn’t know that I hadn’t any papers,’ Rosenberg said that he had been a shop assistant in Warsaw. When Germany invaded Poland in September, 1939, he fled to Lithuania, and made his way across Russia to Japan. The Polish community in Sydney has offered to guarantee the £IOO bond for Rosenberg’s entry to Australia. Dr. Noskowski will try to obtain a permit for him to enter Australia.