Gitelis Szymon

Gitelis Szymon received transit visa no. 1114 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 5 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student - mir yeshiva, aged 25.

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

25

Occupation

Rabbinical Student - Mir Yeshiva

The journey

Reached Japan; reached Shanghai.

What is known

Szymon Gitelis, a 26-year-old Jewish Mir yeshiva student, fled occupied Lithuania in 1940 after receiving a Sugihara life-saving visa numbered 1114. He arrived in Kobe, Japan, where a temporary yeshiva was reopened around March 1941. After Japan severed ties with the Polish Government in Exile in October 1941, he was among close to 1,000 Jews deported to the occupied city of Shanghai and placed in the Shanghai Ghetto. He was liberated in 1945 and had his Polish passport extended in 1946 at the Polish consulate in Nanjing.

This is a page from a Polish passport belonging to Szymon Gitelis, born 20 May 1915 in Maciejów, Poland. He was single (celibate), of medium height, with a long face, brown hair, and brown eyes; his profession is noted as rabbinical studies (uczen rabinacki). The document bears a stamp from the Polish Embassy in Tokyo (Ambasada Polska Tokio), indicating his journey through Japan during the WWII escape route.

This page from a passport, headed 'Wizy-Visas', contains a Shanghai Municipal Police alien exit permit (外僑出境證) issued to Szymon Gitelis, authorizing his departure from Shanghai. The stamps indicate processing by the Shanghai Police Bureau during the Republic of China era, consistent with a refugee who reached Shanghai and was later permitted to leave.

issued in Tokyo on August 27 th 1941 to Jewish Mir yeshiva student named Szymon Gitelis aged 26 who fled occupied Lithuania a year earlier ( was issued a Sugihara life-saving-visa numbered 1114 ) Japan deported close to 1,000 Jews, with Szymon among them, and the staff of the Polish embassy as well to the occupied city of Shanghai Szymon was liberated in 1945 and had the passport extended again on June 26 th 1946 at the Polish consulate in Nanjing

Rok urodzenia: 20/5 1915 Miejsce urodzenia: Maciejów Stan: wolny - célibat AMBASADA POLSKA TOKIO

Wizy - Visas 外僑出境證 Gitelis, Szymon 准予由上海出境 上海市警察局

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 7523, Szymon Gitelis, born 1915, who had come from Mir; the year agrees with the register's compiled age.
• 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 199 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 26, born at Maciejow, a yeshiva student, who arrived in Japan from Vilnius on 14 February 1941.
• JDC Japan Emigration List — Kobe yeshivas, 1941 (Mir, Kamieniec, Slonim, Kleck, Radin, Telz, Lubavitch & others)
  44 1915 Maciejow; uncl.I.Gotlib 174 reach 124 str rockway parc Ld
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Szymon Giteles, 1946: born about 1915, 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 Szymon Giteles, born about 1915 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1946 on the General M. C. Meigs. The register's compiled line gives 1915, 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 1946 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 384, image 486, read by the archive on 20 September 2026.
• 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. He was one of the fifty rabbinical students holding Canadian visas issued in Tokyo in September 1941 (visa No. 505). (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 Szymon Gitelis, rabbinical student, arrived in China in 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 1941 is the route this line is recorded as taking.
• Students of the Mir yeshiva in Shanghai: three lists of the students of the Rabbinical College "Mirrer Yeshiva" (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, lists 48681, 48682 and 48654)
  Szymon Gitelis is named on two of the three lists of the students of the Mir yeshiva in Shanghai indexed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The name occurs once on the register, and the lists are of the yeshiva that came from Vilna by way of Kobe to Shanghai in 1941, the route the register records for its students.
• 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 Szymon Gitefis (Gitelis): born 1915 at Maciejow, a rabbinical student, arrived in 1941 from Kowno; the year, the town and the trade agree with the Kobe Jewish community's refugee register (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
• Shanghai Ghetto - Our Passports
• A document held in the archive's files
• A document held in the archive's files

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