Cohn Moses Jesajas

Cohn Moses Jesajas received transit visa no. 1072 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 5 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student - mir yeshiva.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

German

Occupation

Rabbinical Student - Mir Yeshiva

The journey

Reached Japan; registered in Kobe for USA.

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Dweira (Devorah) Epelgrad Cohn — wife, aged 24, born Slonim, 1916

The register recorded visa holders. It did not reliably record the wives and children who travelled on somebody else’s visa, so these people have no entry of their own and cannot be searched for. Where the archive has recovered a name, it is here.

Where this comes from

• The Bais Yaakov Project (University of Toronto), "Devorah Epelgrad Cohn", by Naftali S. Cohn with Yaakov Cohn and Avivah Yasnyi — the family's account of Devorah Epelgrad and Rabbi Moses J. Cohn: his Sugihara visa, the Mir yeshiva, Kobe,…
  The family's account on the Bais Yaakov Project's page for Devorah Epelgrad Cohn (by their son Naftali S. Cohn, with Yaakov Cohn and Avivah Yasnyi), read on 3 October 2026: Moses J. Cohn was a student of the Mir yeshiva in Vilna when he met Devorah Epelgrad, born at Slonim in 1916, a Bais Yaakov seminary graduate who had fled Slonim for Vilna on the last day of 1939. He offered her a place on his passport and on the transit visa he held from Chiune Sugihara; a civil marriage in Vilna early in 1941 put her on his papers; they crossed Siberia with the Mir yeshiva and spent some months in Kobe; a cousin of his in Boston sponsored him, and they sailed in June 1941 on the Kamakura Maru by way of Honolulu to San Francisco. The civil marriage in Vilna had been a formality for the papers; they married in a religious ceremony in November 1941 and settled in Boston, where Rabbi Cohn was principal of Maimonides School for thirty-one years. The register's Kohn Moses Jezajas, a Mir yeshiva student, is the only Moses Kohn or Cohn of the Mir yeshiva on the register.
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — the Kamakura Maru, Yokohama to Honolulu (22 June 1941) and San Francisco, June 1941 (NARA M1410 roll 370), images 189–191: Moses Jesajas and Dweira Cohn, lines 3–4
  The Kamakura Maru's manifest, Yokohama to San Francisco by way of Honolulu (shore leave stamped there on 22 June 1941), line 3, read by the archive on 3 October 2026: Cohn, Moses Jesajas, 28 years 4 months, married, a student, reading German, Polish and Hebrew, a German national, born at Hamburg, on German-quota immigration visa No. 8483 issued at Yokohama in June 1941; going to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to his cousin Martin Salomon Morton of 475 Broadway, to stay. On the next line is his wife Dweira, 24 years 7 months, born at Slonim, on visa No. 8484. The register's Kohn Moses Jezajas, German, a Mir yeshiva student, matches in full name, nationality and trade, and the family's own account names the ship.
• JDC Archives, New York, collection AR 33/44 file 53 (the Jewish Community of Kobe's returns to the JDC, 1941; Set I, item 00761) — Set… — SS Kamakura Maru, aliens aboard, left Honolulu 22 June 1941 late p.m., due San Francisco 27/28 June
  The Jewish Welfare Board in Honolulu listed him and his wife among the aliens aboard the Kamakura Maru when she left for San Francisco on 22 June 1941, giving their destination as 473 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts (JWB Hawaii list, forwarded to the JDC; JDC Archives, AR 33/44 file 53). The list reads: "Cohn, Moses, J. — 28 — M — M — German — Student — 473 Broadway, Cambridge, Mass." and next line "″ Mrs. Moses J. — 24 — M — F — ″". (Kamakura Maru, left Honolulu 22 Jun 1941 for San Francisco.)
• 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 Mowsza Kohn, who was in Wilno during the war. The archive attaches it under its rule of 19 September 2026: the card file is a record of the refugees in Wilno, where the road through Sugihara's visas began; the full name occurs once on the register; and the card places the person in Wilno in 1939–41, on the road to Sugihara's visas. Credit: Yad Vashem Archives.

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