Paler Benjamin

Paler Benjamin received transit visa no. 1210 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 6 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student - mir yeshiva, aged 29.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

29

Occupation

Rabbinical Student - Mir Yeshiva

The journey

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

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 208 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: born 1911 at Brzesc; relatives abroad: an uncle, Ben Rams, Salt Lake; an uncle, Dov Paler, Rishon, Palestine.
• 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 338 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 30, born at Brzesc.
• JDC Shanghai migration file: PALER Benjamin
  JDC Archives, New York collection AR3344, 'Complete Shanghai Migration Files' (NY_AR3344_00014), page 165: PALER Benjamin, file no. 7800. Match: register No.1210 'Paler Benjamin', and the register independently records this person as reaching Shanghai. Both name parts agree. NOTE: the index carries
• 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. 7800 — 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 25 Feb 1941 (line 1210)
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Beniamin Paler, 1946: born about 1911, 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 Beniamin Paler, born about 1911 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1946 on the General M. C. Meigs. The register's compiled line gives 1911, 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 466, 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)
  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 Benjamin Paler, 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)
  Benjamin Paler 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), 16 August 2000: "HaRav Binyomin Paller, zt"l", by Betzalel Kahn
  Benjamin Paler became HaRav Binyomin Paller, founder and for over thirty years rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Mekor Chaim in Brooklyn. The Jerusalem weekly Dei'ah veDibur, in its obituary of 16 August 2000, says he was born in Brisk, studied under the Brisker Rav and then at the Mir, went with it from Kėdainiai to Shanghai, and came to the United States alone after the war — the town, the yeshiva and the route agree with the register's line and the archive's other records. He died on 6 August 2000 (5 Av 5760) and was buried in Jerusalem.
• 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 Benjamin Paler, born 1911, who was in Wilno during the war. The archive attaches it under its rule of 19 September 2026: the card file is a record of the refugees in Wilno, where the road through Sugihara's visas began; the full name occurs once on the register; and the card places the person in Wilno in 1939–41, on the road to Sugihara's visas. Credit: Yad Vashem Archives.

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