Walkin Szmul received transit visa no. 1410 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 7 August 1940. The register records rabbi - radin yeshiva, aged 45.
What the register records
Nationality as recorded
Polnisch
Age in 1940
45
Occupation
Rabbi - Radin Yeshiva
Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list
wife Cyla (30), children (Chaja (6), Estera (5), Moses (2))
The journey
Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; registered in Kobe for USA.
Travelled with, and never given a number
Cyla Walkin — wife, aged 30, born Poland, 1910
Chaja Lea Walkin — daughter, aged 6, born Poland, 1934
Ester Walkin — daughter, aged 5, born Poland, 1935
Mojsze Jojel Walkin — son, aged 2, born Poland, 1938
Chaim Walkin — son, aged -6, born Poland, 1946
Cyla — wife, aged 30
Chaja — child, aged 6
Estera — child, aged 5
Moses — child, aged 2
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.
What is known
The family's way out of Shanghai is found: in 1946 all of them — Rabbi Shmuel Dovid, Cyla, Chaja Lea, Ester, Mojsze Jojel, and a baby the archive had never met, CHAIM, born in Shanghai that very year — sailed for San Francisco aboard the S.S. General M. C. Meigs. The same ship's emergency-class cabin cards survive in the dossier of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Krawiec, who left Shanghai the same year: the two rabbinic families may well have shared the crossing. The register line that began as "alkin zmul" now runs from Vilna 1940 to a six-person American landing.
Where this comes from
hunt/familysearch: US arrival manifest: Szmuel Dawid Walkin, San Francisco, 1946 "San Francisco Passenger Lists", FamilySearch, entry for Szmuel Dawid Walkin, 1946. NARA M1410, film 384. Ship: General M C Meigs. Match: register No.1410 'alkin zmul' - the ledger lost the initial W - visa 7 Aug 1940, age 45, Rabbi of the Radin Yeshiva, reached Japan and Shanghai, destination USA.
List of refugees receiving JDC aid at Vilna, 1940 — a page carrying entries 8848 to 8880, each giving a number, name, the locality and year of birth, and the town the person came from. JDC Archives. The page includes the Wolkin family at… The family, entered together at numbers 8875 to 8879 and spelled WOLKIN with the Polish crossed l, which is why the name is hard to find under Walkin. The list gives Szmul Dawid, born 1900 at Gruzd; Cyla, born 1913 at Troki; Chaja Leja, born 1934 at Pianek; Ester, born 1935 at Troki; and Mojzesz, born 1938 at Lakowcze, where the family was living when they registered. The compiled register gives this line as a rabbi of the Radin yeshiva with 'wife Cyla (30), children (Chaja (6)...' — the wife's name agrees and Chaja born 1934 is exactly six in 1940. The list adds two children the ledger did not name: Ester, five, and Mojzesz, two. Their birthplaces are four different towns, which is its own record of a family already moving before Kaunas.