well, his government decided after a few weeks that having the capital city packed with refugees was an unsustainable situation, and so the yeshivas were ordered to scatter throughout the nearby towns. The Kaminetz yeshiva relocated to Rasein; the Mir yeshiva to Keidan; the Radin yeshiva to Eishishok; the Kletsk yeshiva to Yanov; the Baranovich yeshiva to Troki, and later Smilishoki; the Bialystok yeshiva of Novardok to Birzh; and the Pinsk yeshiva of Novardok to Wilkomir. The exiled yeshivas were supported by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the rabbinate in America. Attempts to escape Europe The refugees in Lithuania knew that staying where they were in Europe was not a permanent solution, as they were situated between two warring nations, with Nazi Germany to the west and the Soviet Union to the east. The Vaad Hayeshivos ("The Council of Yeshivas", an organization in Eastern Europe led by Grodzinski that helped support the region's yeshivas) worked to supply all the yeshiva students with visas and passports that they would need to escape Europe for Japan and Curacao. Japanese consul Chiune Sugihara issued visas to refugees, against his country's orders. The visas for Curaçao were issued by the Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk. It was actually not a real visa, but a note in the passport that no visa was required for Curaçao. For many of the students, the visas were insufficient: they needed to cross Russia to Japan on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and tickets cost $170, money which many of them did not have (according to Rabbi Dov Eliach's interview with an alumnus of the Kaminetz Yeshiva). The nasi (president) of the Mir yeshiva, Rabbi Avraham Kalmanowitz, went to the United States, understanding that he would be able to help the Jews in Europe much more from there. He was one of the heads of the Vaad Hatzolah in America, and collected money to help his yeshiva. Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, who was in Sweden at the time, and Mike Tress from the United States, also helped collect the funds. In the end, virtually the entire Mir yeshiva was able to escape Europe via the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok, and from there to Kobe, Japan. The yeshiva, together with many other Jewish refugees who managed to escape to the east, was later transferred to Shanghai, where the Japanese interned them in a ghetto. Kalmanowitz continued sending money to them. Fragments of