Bergman Simson

Bergman Simson received transit visa no. 1024 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 3 August 1940. The register records clerk, aged 26.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

26

Occupation

Clerk

The journey

Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; registered in Kobe for Australia and then Israel.

Where this comes from

• 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 205, Simson Bergman, born 1913 at Brzeżany, who came from Lwów; the year agrees with the register's compiled age, and the town with what the archive already holds for this line.
• 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 14 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: born 1913 at Brzezany, Polish; relatives abroad: a brother, J. Bergman, Tel Aviv; a sister, E. Bergman, Herzlia, Bejtmor 4, Haifa.
• 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…
  Entry 30 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 28, born at Brzezany, a clerk, who arrived in Japan from Vilnius on 14 February 1941.
• The Shanghai Ledger — register of Polish citizens kept by the Consulate of Poland in Shanghai, 1934-1943 (original at the Archives of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ref. 43/2003; digitised by the Library of Congress; indexed as…
  Registered with the Polish Consulate in Shanghai (ledger entry 1278); the register line's repaired reading and the ledger agree exactly — matched on the repaired register name, approved under the owner's review of 19 Aug 2026 — the ledger reads: Bergman Simson, clerk (urzednik), born 26 December 1913 Brzezany, single; Tokyo-issued passport of 5 September 1941 (Ser. III 2106) on a British Legation Kaunas certificate of 23 February 1940 (B-114) and a Brzezany identity card of 1939.
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database — the Flight and Rescue electronic dataset (source 20725): USHMM's own transcription of the Kaunas register, 2,140 persons with citizenship, visa type, iss…
  USHMM Flight and Rescue dataset: arrived in Japan 14 Feb 1941 (line 1024)
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Simond Bergman, 1949: born about 1913, Polish. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Francisco)…
  FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Simond Bergman, born about 1913 in Polish, arriving at San Francisco in 1949 on the President Pierce. The register's compiled line gives 1913, and the two are 0 years apart, and the name occurs once on the register. The ship's manifest heading says she sailed from Shanghai, and a passenger born in Poland landing at San Francisco in 1949 from Shanghai is the route's end: the refugees who waited out the war there. So the entry is taken as this person's under the archive's rule of 19 September 2026 for records from the route. The sheet is NARA microfilm publication M1410, film 404, image 184, read by the archive on 20 September 2026.
• HaBoker, 7 May 1941 (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
  Simson Bergman was a leader of the Zionist youth movement HaNoar HaTzioni in Poland. A letter from Kobe printed in HaBoker on 7 May 1941 lists 'Shimon Bergman (Lwów), member of the chief executive of HaNoar HaTzioni' among the General Zionists then waiting in Japan (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
• La-karov ve-la-rachok, 21 March 1946 — the Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
  The Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai, printed by the Jewish Agency Search Bureau's bulletin La-karov ve-la-rachok on 21 March 1946, lists Simson Bergmann: born 1913 at Brzeschano, a teacher, arrived in 1941 from Lithuania by way of Siberia; the year and the town agree with the 1940 Vilna refugee list, the Kobe Jewish community's refugee register, the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).

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