Portnoj Chaim

Portnoj Chaim received transit visa no. 1155 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 5 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student - mir yeshiva, aged 22.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

22

Occupation

Rabbinical Student - Mir Yeshiva

The journey

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

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 7615, Chaim Portnoj, born 1918, who had come from Mir; the year agrees with the register's compiled age.
• 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 254 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: aged 23, born at Siedlce; relatives abroad: cousins, Rabbi Abram Ellman, 1067 Aipslie Street, Chicago, and Max Ellman, 980 Aurtrdom, Newark.
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database — 'List of Polish war refugees in China', 242 names: the Polish (Sugihara-stream) group in wartime Shanghai, among them Gedalia Zupnik of the Mir, Chaim Ba…
  USHMM 'List of Polish war refugees in China' (242 names) — the Polish Sugihara-stream group in wartime Shanghai
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Chaim Portnoj, 1946: born about 1918, 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 Chaim Portnoj, born about 1918 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1946 on the General M. C. Meigs. The register's compiled line gives 1918, 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 385, image 465, read by the archive on 20 September 2026.
• The JDC's Shanghai migration files, 1946–1950 — the index of emigrants from Shanghai (JDC Archives, New York, collection AR 33/44, file 14)
  Chaim Portnoj of the Mir yeshiva is in the JDC's index of its Shanghai emigration cases, filed among those leaving for the United States, as the register's compiled line has him. (JDC Archives, New York, AR 33/44, the Shanghai migration index)
• 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 Chaim Portnoj, 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)
  Chaim Portnoj is named on all three lists of the students of the Mir yeshiva in Shanghai indexed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This is the only line on the register with this given name and surname, 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.

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