Twelve-year-old Marcel Wejland lived in Łódź with his parents Estera and Michał Wejland. In September 1939 German troops invaded Poland. The Jewish family fled the German occupiers to Wilna (Vilnius) soon after. Marcel’s older sisters Maryla and Halina went with them. At the start of 1940 the Wejlands managed to leave for Japan via the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Railway. They had been issued the necessary papers by the Japanese vice-consul Sugihara and the Dutch honorary consul Zwartendijk.
In Japan, they received support from the Jewish aid organization Joint. Zofia Romer and the Polish Committee to Aid War Victims, which she ran, also took care of the family. The organizations helped them financially and found accommodation for them in Kobe. Marcel Wejland attended an American school there. In the fall of 1941, the Wejlands were expelled to Shanghai along with around a thousand other Jewish refugees, and had to live in precarious conditions. Marcel’s father died of cancer there in 1942. In 1946 Marcel Wejland emigrated to Australia with his mother Estera and sister Halina.
Marcel Weyland in the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, 2016. Source: Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN, Warschau
