Barenbaum Michel

Barenbaum Michel received transit visa no. 1145 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 5 August 1940. The register records rabbi - mir yeshiva, aged 34.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

34

Occupation

Rabbi - Mir Yeshiva

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife Fruma (26)

The journey

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

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Fruma — wife, aged 26

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 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 10 (struck out) of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: born 1906 at Krakow; relatives abroad: a brother, M. Barenbaum, 331 Prite Parc Avenue, Vinipek (Winnipeg), Canada.
• 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 24 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 35, born at Kosow, a yeshiva student, who arrived in Japan from Kaunas on 14 February 1941.
• JDC Japan Emigration List — Kobe yeshivas, 1941 (Mir, Kamieniec, Slonim, Kleck, Radin, Telz, Lubavitch & others)
  57 1906 Kosow; aunt S.Cwertkowski 944 kelly str Bronx N.Y.
• JDC Shanghai migration file: BARENBAUM Michel
  JDC Archives, New York collection AR3344, 'Complete Shanghai Migration Files' (NY_AR3344_00014), page 4: BARENBAUM Michel, file no. 7789. Match: register No.1145 'Barenbaum Michel', and the register independently records this person as reaching Shanghai. Both name parts agree. NOTE: the index carrie
• 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 1246) — the consulate's register of Polish citizens who reached the city, 1934-1943 — the ledger reads: Barenbaum Michal, born 16 February 1906 Kosow; registered 21 November 1941; Tokyo-issued passport of 22 September 1941.
• JDC Archives, New York — Shanghai Migration Files, box index (AR 33/44, file 00014): the alphabetical index to the JDC's Shanghai emigration case files, 1946-1950 — some 2,640 case files covering about 5,400 persons, each family under on…
  JDC Shanghai Migration Files, case file no. 7789 — an emigration case file opened for the family in Shanghai after the war; the file itself can be requested from the JDC Archives
• 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 14 Feb 1941 (line 1145)
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Michel Barenbaum, 1946: born about 1908, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Francisc…
  FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Michel Barenbaum, born about 1908 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1946 on the General M. C. Meigs. The register's compiled line gives 1906, and the two are 2 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 510, 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 who had arrived in China in August 1941 and wished to go on to Palestine. He was one of the fifty rabbinical students holding Canadian visas issued in Shanghai in October 1941 (visa No. 1244/41). He is on the UNRRA list of Polish rabbinical students who left Shanghai for Canada on the General Meigs, a list dated 5 June 1946. (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 Michel Barenbaum, rabbinical student, arrived in China in 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 Aug 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)
  Michel Barenbaum is named on one 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, 21 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 21 March 1946, lists Michel Barenbaum: born 1906 at Kossov, a student of the Mir yeshiva, arrived in 1941 from Vilnius; the year, the town and the trade agree with the Kobe Jewish community's refugee register, the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
• 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 Michal Berenbaum, born 1906, of Kosów, who was in Wilno during the war; the year and the town agree with this register line. Credit: Yad Vashem Archives.

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