Try My Heritage as they have a large Lithuanian database.

Ronald Kaplan
MISCHELEVICH/LAGER, VIZGARDISKY, BERGMAN  FROM KAUNAS

Interwar Lithuania did not require residents to get a external passport in order to leave the country. It was the Russian empire that required such a document.

And up until 1924, the US did not require immigrants to have a passport or visa to enter the country. After 1924, when the immigration laws tightened up considerably, immigrants required visas in order to enter the US, and the visa had to be procured from a US embassy in the immigrant's home country before starting their journey.

I have family that came from Lithuania to the US in the early 1920s. I actually found their ship passenger lists to contain more detailed information about their immediate lives in Lithuania, than the one internal passport application that I have found for another relative.

There are other family members that I have, who did apply for internal passports, but all that exists is a list on Jewishgen that shows they received the passports. I have also asked the Lithuanian archives, and they do not have the passport applications for these relatives. My takeaway is that over the years some of these applications were lost.

You could inquire directly on the Litvaksig website, with contacts there, about any other places that you might look for passport records.

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Michele Lock

Lak/Lok/Liak/Lock and Kalon/Kolon in Zagare/Joniskis/Gruzdziai, Lithuania
Lak/Lok/Liak/Lock in Plunge/Telsiai in Lithuania
Rabinowitz in Papile, Lithuania and Riga, Latvia
Trisinsky/Trushinsky/Sturisky and Leybman in Dotnuva, Lithuania
Olitsky in Alytus, Suwalki, Poland/Lithuania
Gutman/Goodman in Czestochowa, Poland
Lavine/Lev/Lew in Trenton, New Jersey and Lida/Vilna gub., Belarus

Thanks. I already searched that database plus others (Ancestry, JewishGen, etc) and couldn't find anything under various forms of his and his family members' names. Attached is the manifest showing him and his family.
Mark Horowitz

You can search the All Lithuanian Database and sort through the results for his name. Not all internal passports are indexed.

The Lithuanian internal passports were primarily citizenship papers and not required to emigrate. The US didn't require passports or visas from immigrants in 1921. 
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David Belton
Pennsylvania

I asked the Lithuanian Archives for records on my grandfather, Samuel Horowitz, but they couldn't find them. The Ellis Island manifest said he arrived under the name "Zalmann Horwitz" with his mother and siblings in 1921 at age 19. I asked the archives again to search under that name, the Lithuanian version of Horowitz (Gurvitz), and the surname Dokshytsy (possible real name according to family folklore), but no luck. I understood there was no way he could have left Lithuania without a passport, and his name in the passport should have matched the name on the manifest, although his Alien Registration form showed he arrived under the name Zalman Gurvitz.

I know the Litvak SIG holds a collection of internal passports, but I'm not sure which region to search. US documents show that he and his sibling were born in Hoduciszki (aka Adutiskis), which is northeast of Vilnius. The manifest showed his last residence was Wirballen (aka Virbalis), west of Vilnius, but I saw on the shtetl website that the town was mostly abandoned during World War I. So, I suppose that could have been his last permanent residence before moving from town to town before he left.

Any help, suggestions, tips to unravel the mystery would be appreciated. Thank you.

Mark Horowitz

msh@...