Walkin Szmul

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.

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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

• 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.
• Rabbi Chuna (Elchonon Yosef) Hertzman, Mirer yeshive in golus — the Mir yeshiva in exile (Brooklyn: the author, 1950). A 28-page Yiddish account by a student of the yeshiva of its road from Mir to Vilna, Keidan, Kobe and Shanghai, with a…
  A photograph of a funeral in the Shanghai ghetto in Rabbi Chuna (Elchonon Yosef) Hertzman's Mirer yeshive in golus (Brooklyn, 1950), p. 7, no. 14, is captioned HaRav Walkin delivering the eulogy. Rabbi Szmuel Dawid Walkin of this entry sailed from Shanghai for San Francisco in 1946; the caption gives only the surname, so the match is tentative.
• American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives: the Kobe Jewish committee's JDC relief list of February 1941, page 35
  Page 35 of the Kobe committee's list of refugees receiving JDC aid, February 1941, enters Walkin Samuel Dawid, 47, of Zdzięcioł, rabbi, arrived 25 February from Vilno, with his family — Cyla, Chaja Leja and Estera. The given name and the calling agree with the register's Walkin Szmul, a rabbi of the Radin yeshiva; the list's age of 47 is two years above the register's 45.
• 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)
  UNRRA's China Office registered him in Shanghai in 1946 among the Polish rabbis and rabbinical students, as a rabbi who wished to go on to Palestine. A list of the same year gives his birth as 1894, in Zdzieciol. He was listed among the passengers for the General Meigs to the United States in July 1946. He travelled with his wife Cyla and their four children; the family lived at 281 Liaoyang Road. (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 1894 in Zdzienciel. His wife Cila is listed with him, born in 1910 in Radun, and their four 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)
  Szmul D Walkin 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. The name occurs once on the register; 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.
• 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…
  The Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register lists Samuel Dawid Walkin, aged 47, born at Zdzieciol, a rabbi, who reached Japan on 25 February 1941.
• 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…
  The Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad has Samuel Dawid Walkin, born in 1894 at Zdzieciol.
• San Francisco Passenger Lists (NARA M1410, film 384; FamilySearch, owner sign-in, 10 Aug 2026): the WALKIN family's 1946 arrival from Shangha… — a sixth child, born in Shanghai on the eve of the crossing, previously unknown to this record
• American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives: the Kobe Jewish committee's JDC relief list of February 1941, page 35
• JDC Archives — 1940 list of Polish Jewish refugees in Vilna receiving JDC aid, lines 8874-8879: Pruski Abram (Radun 1911); Wolkin Mojzesz (1938 Lakowcze), Ester (193… — courtesy of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives
• JDC Archives — Walkin family passport photo taken before they left Shanghai; Chaya Leah stands behind her mother at right (UNRRA stamp on the print) — courtesy of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives
• JDC Archives — JDC Transmigration Bureau card for the Walkin family, Case No.3321 — depositor Rabbi M. Londinski, 229 Van Siclen Ave., Brooklyn, for the three childr… — courtesy of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives

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