Machlis Leon

Machlis Leon received transit visa no. 1028 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 3 August 1940. The register records bookkeeper, aged 37.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

37

Occupation

Bookkeeper

The journey

Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; registered in Kobe for USA.

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 a Leon Mazlis at entry 3647, born 1906 at Warsaw, who had come from Warsaw. It is shown as a lead, not as this person: spelled Mazlis; born 1906 against the register's age of 37, which puts the birth about 1902–03; Warsaw agrees.
• 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…
  The Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: born 1902 at Warszawa; relatives abroad: a cousin, Alter Machlis, 3131 54th Street, Woodside, Long Island, New York; a brother-in-law, Seweryn Fajnsztajn, care of Cukerman, 6801 21st Street, Brooklyn, New York.
• 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 441 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 39, born at Warsaw, a clerk, who arrived in Japan from Vilnius on 13 February 1941.
• JDC Shanghai migration file: MACHLIS Leon
  JDC Archives, New York collection AR3344, 'Complete Shanghai Migration Files' (NY_AR3344_00014), page 79: MACHLIS Leon, file no. 3385. Match: register No.1028 'Machlis Leon', and the register independently records this person as reaching Shanghai. Both name parts agree. NOTE: the index carries no ag
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Leon Machlis, 1948: born about 1903, Poland. 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 Leon Machlis, born about 1903 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1948 on the General M. C. Meigs. The register's compiled line gives 1902, and the two are 1 year apart, and the name occurs once on the register. The sheet names the ship but its heading could not be read for the port she sailed from, so this is held as a lead until it can. The sheet is NARA microfilm publication M1410, film 397, image 450, read by the archive on 20 September 2026.
• La-karov ve-la-rachok, 6 August 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 6 August 1946, lists Leon Machiis: born 1902 at Warsaw, a bookkeeper, arrived in 1941 from Lithuania; the year, the town and the trade 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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