Josef Szczytnicki

Josef Szczytnicki received transit visa no. 1201 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 6 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student - mir yeshiva, aged 24.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

24

Occupation

Rabbinical Student - Mir Yeshiva

The journey

Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; 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 a Josef Sztytnicki at entry 5312, born 1912 at Brześć, who had come from Brześć. It is shown as a lead, not as this person: spelled Sztytnicki; born 1912 against the register's age of 24, which puts the birth about 1916; Brześć agrees with other records.
• 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 322 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: aged 31, born at Brzesc, a yeshiva student; relatives abroad: an uncle, Louis Raff, 2811 Cincinatti, Los Angeles.
• 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 names closely match this register line — approved by the owner's review, 19 Aug 2026
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Josef Szczytnicki, 1947: born about 1922, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Francis…
  FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Josef Szczytnicki, born about 1922 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1947. The register's compiled line gives 1916. A lead only: the birth years are 6 years apart, which is more than the archive accepts without the 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; he had arrived in China in August 1941. In 1946 he was among the students accepted by the Hebrew Theological College in Chicago. (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 Josef Szczytnicki, rabbinical student, arrived in China in Aug 1941, wishing to go to the United States. 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)
  Josef Szczytnicki is named on all 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.

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