Gorfinkel Chaim

Gorfinkel Chaim received transit visa no. 1392 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 7 August 1940. The register records rabbi - kollel vilna, aged 45.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

45

Occupation

Rabbi - Kollel Vilna

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

children (Sara (2), Szulamis (0), husband of #1454

The journey

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

What is known

This is a 'Special Pass For Rabbi Student' issued in Shanghai to Chaim Gorfinkiel, a 51-year-old Polish national residing at 285/5 Pinchow Rd. The pass permitted him to travel to No. 493 JanSan Rd. from the designated restricted area (the Hongkew ghetto), valid during 1945. Gorfinkiel was among the Polish Jewish refugees who reached Shanghai, likely part of the community associated with Sugihara/Zwartendijk transit visas.

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…
  7932, b.1884, Malcz
• 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…
  101, 47, Bjszyszki; brother Abram Gorfinkiel Evansville Indiana
• 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
• A document held in the archive's files