Dawid Kwiat

Dawid Kwiat received transit visa no. 1178 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 5 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student - mir yeshiva, aged 19.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

19

Occupation

Rabbinical Student - Mir Yeshiva

The journey

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

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 a Dawid Kwiat at entry 7553, who had come from Mir; the full name occurs once on the register, and the archive treats the entry as this person's on that basis alone.
• 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 175 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: aged 21, born at Bialystok, Polish.
• 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 1242) — the consulate's register of Polish citizens who reached the city, 1934-1943 — the ledger reads: Kwiat Dawid, student, Jewish, born 6 December 1920 Bialystok, single; registered 21 November 1941; 308 Route Cardinal Mercier; Tokyo-issued passport of 24 September 1941, valid to 23 September 1942.
• 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. 7859 — an emigration case file opened for the family in Shanghai after the war; the file itself can be requested from the JDC Archives (names closely match; approved under the owner's standing review)
• Wikipedia, "Dovid Kviat" — the English Wikipedia's article on Rabbi Dovid Kviat (1920–2009), a rosh yeshiva of the Mirrer Yeshiva in Brooklyn and rabbi of Agudas Yisroel of 18th Avenue: born 6 December 1920 at Białystok to Rabbi Avrohom…
  The register's Dawid Kwiat is Rabbi Dovid Kviat (1920–2009), later a rosh yeshiva of the Mirrer Yeshiva in Brooklyn. The identification does not rest on the name: the Polish consulate's Shanghai register gives its Kwiat Dawid, at entry 1242, as a student born 6 December 1920 at Białystok, and that is the birth date and birthplace of Rabbi Kviat, a Mir yeshiva student from Białystok who fled with the yeshiva through Siberia to Kobe and on to Shanghai. Born to Rabbi Avrohom Eliezer Kviat; chose the Mir yeshiva over Kamieniec; after the war taught at the Mirrer Yeshiva in Brooklyn and was rabbi of Agudas Yisroel of 18th Avenue in Boro Park; author of the Talmudic commentaries Sukas Dovid. He died in Brooklyn in November 2009: the article gives 11 November, the Matzav notice published that day gives 10 November.
• Matzav.com, 11 November 2009: "Rav Dovid Kviat zt"l" — the obituary notice published the day he died: born 1920 at Białystok, son of Rav Avrohom Eliezer Kviat, a Slonimer chossid, and Chaya Reisha, who died when he was three; a student o…
  The notice published the day he died: born 1920 at Białystok to Rav Avrohom Eliezer Kviat, a Slonimer chossid, and Chaya Reisha, who died when he was three; a student of the Mir yeshiva in Poland who reached Kobe and then Shanghai with the yeshiva; married in Brooklyn on 19 June 1947; for more than thirty-five years rabbi of Agudas Yisroel–Snif Chofetz Chaim on 18th Avenue, Boro Park, and a teacher at the Mirrer Yeshiva; author of more than forty works; died in Brooklyn on 10 November 2009, survived by his wife and ten children.
• Chinuch.org audio-video library, "Shanghai Miracle: Interview with Rabbi Dovid Kviat" (added 19 June 2013) — a recorded video interview in which Rabbi Kviat, described as a former rosh yeshiva of the Mirrer Yeshiva and rabbi of Agudas Yi…
  A recorded interview in which he tells the journey himself: with the Mir yeshiva from Poland across Russia to Japan and Shanghai, where he waited out the war before coming to America. The Yeshiva World re-published it in February 2024 as a first-hand account of the escape.
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Dawid Kwiat, 1946: born about 1920, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Francisco). S…
  FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Dawid Kwiat, born about 1920 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1946 on the General M. C. Meigs. The register's compiled line gives 1921, and the two are 1 year 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 478, 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; he had arrived in China in September 1941. His Polish passport was No. K-147/1/21/41. He was one of the fifty rabbinical students holding Canadian visas issued in Shanghai in October 1941 (visa No. 1252/41). 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.)
• The JDC's Shanghai migration files, 1946–1950 — the index of emigrants from Shanghai (JDC Archives, New York, collection AR 33/44, file 14)
  Dawid Kwiat of the Mir yeshiva is in the JDC's index of its Shanghai emigration cases, filed among those leaving for Canada or England; the register's compiled line sends him to Canada. (JDC Archives, New York, AR 33/44, the Shanghai migration index)
• The 1950 United States census (US National Archives, 1950census.archives.gov)
  In April 1950 the United States census found him in Brooklyn, aged 29, born in Poland, married with two small children, on the same census sheet as his fellow Mir student Hersz Zarkowski (National Archives, 1950 census, enumeration district 24-2053, sheet 72).
• 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 Dawid Kwiat, rabbinical student, arrived in China in Sep 1941, wishing to go to Canada. 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 Sep 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)
  Dawid Kwiat 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.
• Dei'ah veDibur (Jerusalem), 19 November 2009: "HaRav Dovid Kviat zt"l", by Yechiel Sever
  Dawid Kwiat became HaRav Dovid Kviat, one of the roshei yeshiva of the Mir in Brooklyn and the author of the Talmud commentary Succas Dovid. The Jerusalem weekly Dei'ah veDibur, in its obituary of 19 November 2009, gives his birth in Białystok in 1921 and his flight with the yeshiva to Shanghai, and says he came to the United States after the war with a large group of the yeshiva's students — the year and the birthplace agree with the register's line and the archive's other records, and the route is his. He died in Brooklyn on the night of 11 November 2009 and was buried in Jerusalem.

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