Lewinson Josel

Lewinson Josel received transit visa no. 1280 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 6 August 1940. The register records rabbi - mir yeshiva, aged 49.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

49

Occupation

Rabbi - Mir Yeshiva

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

husband of #1279

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 3413, Josel Lewinson, born 1890 at Choroszcz, who had come from Czyżew; the year agrees with the register's age and Choroszcz agrees with the archive's 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 169 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: born 1890 at Choroszcz; relatives abroad: an uncle, S. Lewinson, Fifth Avenue, New York.
• 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 414 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 51, born at Choroszcz, a rabbi, who arrived in Japan from Vilnius on 25 February 1941.
• 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 1271) — the consulate's register of Polish citizens who reached the city, 1934-1943
• 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
• 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 1280)
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Josel Lewinson, 1946: born about 1890, 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 Josel Lewinson, born about 1890 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1946 on the General M. C. Meigs. The register's compiled line gives 1890, 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 477, 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)
  In 1946 he was among the students accepted by Congregation Sons of Moses Anshei Andrzievo in New York and the Mesifta Talmudical Seminary in Brooklyn. (United Nations Archives, UNRRA China Office records.)
• UNRRA China Office, S-1132-0000-0181, Mizrachi members list and the United Board of Rabbis' birth-data pages, Shanghai 1945–46 (UN Archives, AG-018-001)
  The United Board of Rabbis and Rabbinical Colleges in Shanghai listed him among its members after the war, born in 1890 in Choroscz. His wife Gryna is listed with him, and their son Hersz. (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 Josel Lewinson, rabbi, arrived in China in Oct 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 Oct 1941 is the route this line is recorded as taking.

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