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.

Documents

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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.

Special Pass For Rabbi Student Name GORFINKIEL Chaim F.N. Polish Age 51 Special permition is given to the above person to go to No. 493 JanSan RD. from the designated area.

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 7932, Chaim Garfinkiel, born 1884, who had come from Malcz; his daughters Sura and Sulamita, born 1937 and 1938, stand on the following lines as the register's Sara and Szulamis, though the list's year for him, 1884, is about ten years earlier than the register's compiled age.
• 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 101 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: aged 47, born at Bjszyszki; relatives abroad: a 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
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Chaim Gorfinkiel, 1946: born about 1894, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Francisc…
  FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Chaim Gorfinkiel, born about 1894 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1946 on the General M. C. Meigs. The register's compiled line gives 1895, 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 385, image 489, read by the archive on 20 September 2026.
• 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 1894 in Eisiskes. His wife Chana is listed with him, and their three children. (United Nations Archives, UNRRA China Office records.)
• List of members of the United Board of Rabbis and Rabbinical Colleges, Shanghai (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, list 48661)
  Chaim Gorfinkel is named on the list of members of the United Board of Rabbis and Rabbinical Colleges in Shanghai, indexed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This is the only line on the register with this given name and surname; the Board was the body of the Polish rabbis and yeshiva students who reached Shanghai from Kobe in 1941, and their families, the route the register records for this line.
• La-karov ve-la-rachok, 28 March 1946 — the Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
  The Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai, printed by the Jewish Agency Search Bureau's bulletin La-karov ve-la-rachok on 28 March 1946, lists Chaim Gorfinkel: born 1894 at Eischischik, a rabbi, arrived in 1941 from Vilno; the year and the trade agree with the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
• A Special Pass for Rabbi Student issued in Shanghai to Chaim Gorfinkiel (No. 1392), Polish, aged 51, No. 70, valid to 30 April 1945 and extended, with his photograph.

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