Szapiro Mejer

Szapiro Mejer received transit visa no. 1054 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 5 August 1940. The register records rabbi - lublin yeshiva, aged 23.

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

23

Occupation

Rabbi - Lublin Yeshiva

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

husband of #796

The journey

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

What is known

At twenty-three, handed the yeshiva's remaining cash — "Meier, take over the command" — he walked twenty boys east out of burning Lublin by night, and crossed the Bug on Rosh Hashanah 1939 behind a stranger who appeared at the bank, asked two zlotys a head, waded them across single file, and melted back into the dark. In Vilna he helped re-found his yeshiva from ten starving boys. When the Curaçao route opened, the money for visas sat with the Amshenover Rebbe, who would not release it for food; when the visas came, he said the sentence the family kept: "Take the visas. If you are hungry you will be hungry again." Blocked from the dollar fare, Meier bought a ruble ticket in Riga, crossed… At twenty-three, handed the yeshiva's remaining cash — "Meier, take over the command" — he walked twenty boys east out of burning Lublin by night, and crossed the Bug on Rosh Hashanah 1939 behind a stranger who appeared at the bank, asked two zlotys a head, waded them across single file, and melted back into the dark. In Vilna he helped re-found his yeshiva from ten starving boys. When the Curaçao route opened, the money for visas sat with the Amshenover Rebbe, who would not release it for food; when the visas came, he said the sentence the family kept: "Take the visas. If you are hungry you will be hungry again." Blocked from the dollar fare, Meier bought a ruble ticket in Riga, crossed Siberia in February 1941, and sailed from Vladivostok on a boat ticket telegraphed for another Shapiro entirely. Kobe, then Shanghai: the ghetto years as "Meier the Doctor," giving injections the trembling Dr. Seligson could not; the day he waited in an anteroom while the Amshinover Rebbe asked the Swedish delegation to intercede for Polish Jewry, and the answer came back that Sweden could not dictate to Germany. He left Shanghai in 1946 as a fictitious bus-boy on a Swedish freighter and finished the journey at Torah Vodaas in Brooklyn. Recorded by his family in 2007; provided by his daughter Millie Levy.

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 5081, Meir Szapiro, born 1916 at Dobrzyń, who had come from Lublin; the year agrees with the register's age and Dobrzyń agrees with the archive's other records.
• 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 8958, Majer Szapiro, born 1919 at Pohost, who had come from Pinsk; the year agrees with the register's compiled age, and his wife Malka is at entry 8418.
• 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 251 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: born 1916 at Dobrzyn; relatives abroad: an uncle, Fuks, Rio de Janeiro; a cousin, Moses Coven, 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 630 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 25, born at Dobrzyn, a rabbi, who arrived in Japan from Vilnius on 25 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 1453); the register line's dropped first letters restored, the names agree — approved by the owner's review, 19 Aug 2026 — the ledger reads: Szapiro Majer, born 18 SEPTEMBER 1916 in DOBRZYN — Henry Shapiro, whose memoir the archive holds, registered with the Polish Consulate in Shanghai on 13 December 1941 on a Tokyo-issued passport of 3 December 1941: the consulate's own confirmation of his Shanghai years.
• 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 25 Feb 1941 (line 1054)
• UNRRA China Office, S-1132-0000-0181, registration of Polish rabbis and rabbinical students, their lists and sailings, Shanghai 1945–1946 (UN Archives, AG-018-001)
  UNRRA's China Office registered him in Shanghai in 1946 among the Polish rabbis and rabbinical students; he wished to go on to Brazil. (United Nations Archives, UNRRA China Office records.)
• UNRRA China Office, S-1132-0000-0181, Mizrachi members list and the United Board of Rabbis' birth-data pages, Shanghai 1945–46 (UN Archives, AG-018-001)
  The United Board of Rabbis and Rabbinical Colleges in Shanghai listed him among its members after the war, born in 1916 in Dobrzyn. (United Nations Archives, UNRRA China Office records.)
• Henry Shapiro memoir — three chapters recorded September-October 2007 (Chaim Meir Yechiel Szapiro, b. 18 Sep 1916 Dobrzyń on the Vistula; Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin), provided by his daughter Millie Levy, August 2026. Full text preserved i…
• Shanghai Ledger, page 182 (left): entries 1451-1458, registered 13 December 1941 on Tokyo-issued passports of 2-5 December 1941: Rozenberg Szul Dawid (student, b. 15 Apr 1919 Ryki, at 35 Moulmein Road), Rozencwajg Chil (b. 6 May 1922 Ost…
• Shanghai Ledger, page 182 (right): entries 1451-1458, registered 13 December 1941 on Tokyo-issued passports of 2-5 December 1941: Rozenberg Szul Dawid (student, b. 15 Apr 1919 Ryki, at 35 Moulmein Road), Rozencwajg Chil (b. 6 May 1922 Os…

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