Bursztyniarz Michel

Bursztyniarz Michel received transit visa no. 1403 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 7 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student - novaredoker yeshiva bialystock, aged 26.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

26

Occupation

Rabbinical Student - Novaredoker Yeshiva Bialystock

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife Gerda (16)

The journey

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

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Gerda — wife, aged 16

The register recorded visa holders. It did not reliably record the wives and children who travelled on somebody else’s visa, so these people have no entry of their own and cannot be searched for. Where the archive has recovered a name, it is here.

Where this comes from

• Mark Halpern correspondence (9 Aug 2026): Netherlands Legation certificate, Tokyo, 18 March 1941 — Minister J.C. Pabst certifies that 74 named persons of Polish nationality "do not need a Netherlands visa in order to proceed to the Nethe…
  Amakusa Maru 74 — Netherlands Legation certificate (Tokyo, 18 Mar 1941), line 37. Cross-referenced by Mark Halpern, researcher (Aug 2026); archive pass concurs. register row reads Bursztyniarz Michel.
• 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 1361) — the consulate's register of Polish citizens who reached the city, 1934-1943 — the ledger reads: Bursztyniarz vel Abramczyk Michel, RABBI, born 30 July 1913 Ostrow; 121 Macgregor Road; registered 13 December 1941 on a passport issued by the Shanghai consulate itself (B-105, 5 December 1941) — with Jankiel Bursztyniarz vel Abramczyk (student, b. 1916 Ostrow, entry 1362), not in the Kaunas register.
• The list of seventy-four — Netherlands Legation, Tokyo, 18 March 1941. On the Legation's letterhead (Gezantschap der Nederlanden), certifying 'that the undermentioned persons all of Polish nationality do not need a Netherlands visa in or…
  Named at position 37 of seventy-four on the Netherlands Legation's certificate of 18 March 1941 — the list of the people who reached Tsuruga on Sugihara's transit visas without a Curaçao endorsement, were refused permission to land, and whose ship was turned back towards Vladivostok. The Legation typed the name as "Bursztynarz-Abramczyk Michel". A pencilled note beside it gives this register number, which is how the two records are joined.
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Michel Vel Abram-Czyk Bursztyniarz, 1947: born about 1914, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arrivi…
  FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Michel Vel Abram-Czyk Bursztyniarz, born about 1914 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1947. The register's compiled line gives 1914. A lead only: the register carries 2 lines of this name, and the index entry cannot be assigned to one of them without the manifest sheet.
• 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 1913 in Ostrow. His wife Gerda is listed with him, born in 1923 in Berlin. (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 Michel Bursztyniarz, rabbinical student, arrived in China in Aug 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 Aug 1941 is the route this line is recorded as taking.
• 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)
  Michel Bursztyniarz 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, 21 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 21 March 1946, lists Michel Bursztyniarz-Abramczyk: born 1913 at Ostrowo, a student of the Mir yeshiva, arrived in 1941 from Kowno; the year agrees with the age the register gives, the name occurs once on the register, and an arrival in Shanghai in 1941 from Lithuania is the Sugihara route itself, so the archive attaches it under its rule of 19 September 2026 (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).

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