Epsztejn Josef Dawid

Epsztejn Josef Dawid received transit visa no. 1077 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 5 August 1940. The register records rabbi - mir yeshiva, aged 28.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

28

Occupation

Rabbi - Mir Yeshiva

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife Szejna (32), children (Itka, Chaim Lejb (3), Fejga Ester (1))

The journey

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

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Szejna — wife, aged 32

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

• 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 7504, Josef Dawid Epsztejn, born 1911, who had come from Mir; the year agrees with the register's compiled age, and his wife Szejna Ita and son Chaim Lejba stand on the following lines.
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Josif Dawid Epsztein, 1946: born about 1911, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Fran…
  FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Josif Dawid Epsztein, born about 1911 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1946. The register's compiled line gives 1912. A lead only: the register carries 2 lines of this name, and the index entry cannot be assigned to one of them without the manifest sheet.
• 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, as a rabbinical student who wished to go on to Palestine. (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 1911 in Mir. The list adds that he was also the secretary of the Mir yeshiva. His wife Szejna-Itka is listed with him, born in 1907 in Mir, and their two children. (United Nations Archives, UNRRA China Office records.)
• Polish rabbis and rabbinical students registered with UNRRA, Shanghai (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, China Office;… — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, list 48676
  The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration's Shanghai register of Polish rabbis and rabbinical students, indexed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, has Josif Dawid Epsztejn, rabbinical student, arrived in China in 30 Aug 1941, wishing to go to Palestine. The name occurs once on the register; the list is of the refugees who came from Vilna by way of Kobe, and an arrival in Shanghai in 30 Aug 1941 is the route this line is recorded as taking.
• List of members of the United Board of Rabbis and Rabbinical Colleges, Shanghai (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, list 48661)
  Josef Dawid Epsztejn is named on the list of members of the United Board of Rabbis and Rabbinical Colleges in Shanghai, indexed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, with his family. Both given names are the register's for this line (No. 1366 is the compilers' duplicate of it); the Board was the body of the Polish rabbis and yeshiva students who reached Shanghai from Kobe in 1941.
• La-karov ve-la-rachok, 28 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 28 March 1946, lists Josef-David Epsztejn: born 1911 at Mir, a yeshiva student, arrived in 1941 from Wilno by way of Siberia; the year and the trade agree with the 1940 Vilna refugee list (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).

×