Chaim Szpilberg

Chaim Szpilberg received transit visa no. 1008 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 3 August 1940. The register records clerk, aged 27.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

27

Occupation

Clerk

The journey

Reached Japan; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for Palestine.

Where this comes from

• The Kobe relatives list — refugees at Kobe in 1941 recorded with their relatives abroad. Seventy-six pages in numbered sheets (LIST No. 7, No. 16 and others), each line giving a name, age, birthplace, occupation and citizenship, and then…
  Entry 245 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: born 1913 at Kolki; relatives abroad: a brother, Lui Szpilberg, 3654 St Lawrence Boulevard, Montreal; a sister, Chawa Szpilberg, 20 Berochow Street, Tel Aviv.
• HaMashkif, 18 and 19 September 1941, and HaBoker, 25 September 1941 (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
  In September 1941 Chaim Szpilberg sent word from Japan to his sister Chawa in Tel Aviv; HaMashkif printed his greeting on 18 September 1941 among the messages from relatives in Japan and India, and HaBoker again on 25 September; by the spring of 1942 he was writing to her from Calcutta and Bombay (Davar, 19 March 1942) (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
• Yalkut Wohlin (Tel Aviv), 1 June 1984 (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
  A possible record, not yet confirmed as this person: a Chaim Szpilberg is named in Yalkut Wohlin, the periodical of the Volhynian Jews in Israel, in 1984–87 (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press); he was born at Kolki in Volhynia, but the entry has not yet been read in context, so it is shown as a lead.
• The JEWCOM register — the refugee register kept by the Refugee Committee of the Jewish Community of Kobe (Ashkenazim) at No. 6 Yamamoto-dori, 1-chome, whose cable address was 'JEWCOM Kobe'. Eighty-four pages on the committee's own printe…
  The Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register lists Chaim Mojsze Szpilberg, aged 28, born at Kolki, a clerk, who reached Japan on 14 February 1941. Sugihara's ledger lost the first letter of his surname; the register has it in full.
• Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem — the card file of Jewish refugees from Poland who found refuge in various countries, 1939–1941
  Yad Vashem's card file of Jewish refugees from Poland who found refuge in various countries, 1939–1941, has a card for Chaim Szpilberg, born in 1913, a civil servant of Kołki, who was in Wilno during the war; the year, the town and his work as a clerk agree with this register line. Credit: Yad Vashem Archives.
• List of Refugees, Vilna, 1940 — JDC Archives, New York, collection AR 33/44, file 00876. The contemporary register of Polish Jewish refugees in Lithuania, running to more than nine thousand numbered entries; the fullest independent check…
  The 1940 Vilna refugee list has, at entry 5157, Szpilberg Chaim Mosze, born 1913, who came from Warsaw; the year and both given names agree with the Kobe lists. The Vilna list writes Warsaw as his birthplace where both Kobe lists write Kołki; the records disagree on the town and agree on the year.

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