In 1937, he moved to Kobe, Japan, to work in a textile firm. The small Jewish community there elected him its honorary secretary.[4] From August 1940 to November 1941 two thousand Polish-Lithuanian Jewish refugees, who were saved from the Holocaust by the Japanese viceconsul in Kaunas, Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara, 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, their visas so they could stay on in Japan.