Wassercug Lejb

Wassercug Lejb received transit visa no. 1423 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 7 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student, aged 19.

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

19

Occupation

Rabbinical Student

The journey

Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for USA.

Where this comes from

• 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 354 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: aged 20, born at Warsaw, a yeshiva student, Polish; relatives abroad: an aunt, Ewa Wassell, 1098 Gerard Avenue, Bronx, New York.
• 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 1092); the names closely match this register line — approved by the owner's review, 19 Aug 2026 — the ledger reads: Wassercug Lejb, student, born 1921 Warsaw, single; 98 Macgregor Road; passport issued by the Polish Consulate in HARBIN 27 January 1941 (W-156, Ser. II 290548) on a certificate of 1 August 1940 (W-168) from the Polish section of the British Legation in Kaunas.
• JDC Archives, New York, collection AR33-44 fi… — “List of persons who left Japan for Shanghai and Harbin in the month of May 1941”, compiled by the Jewish Community of Kobe (Ashkenazim) for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
  Named in the Kobe committee's list of persons who left Japan for Shanghai and Harbin in the month of May 1941 (JDC Archives). Lejb Wassercug sailed from Kobe on 25 May 1941, entered here as 'Waserzung', with HARBIN given as his destination. A yeshiva student of twenty from Warsaw. NOTE a tension the archive does not resolve: this document sends him to Harbin, while the Polish consulate at Shanghai recorded him registering there. Both can be true of one man in wartime China, and neither is a statement of where he ended up.
• HIAS Shanghai (the Far Eastern Jewish Central Information Bureau for Emigrants, M. Birman, manager) to HIAS New York: the list of refugees who left Shanghai during August 1946 — sixteen names on the first sheet, all sailing on 11 August…
  HIAS Shanghai's list of refugees who left Shanghai during August 1946 names a 'Wassercug, Lejb' among the sixteen who sailed on 11 August 1946 aboard the S.S. Marine Lynx for the United States. Under the archive's rule of 19 September 2026 a name on a list of the Sugihara refugees' own route counts as a corroboration when the full name occurs once on the register and the record's place and date fit the route; all three hold here, and the line is attached on that basis.
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Lejb Wassercug, 1946: born about 1921, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Francisco)…
  FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Lejb Wassercug, born about 1921 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1946 on the Marine Lynx. The register's compiled line gives 1921, and the two are 0 years 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 384, image 26, read by the archive on 20 September 2026.
• 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)
  The Agudath Israel organisation of refugees from Poland in Shanghai listed him among its members on 24 December 1945: Lejb Wassercug, born in 1921 in Warsaw, Polish passport No. W-156/2/13/41 issued in Harbin on 3 July 1941. The UNRRA China Office kept the list with its 1946 registration of Polish rabbis and rabbinical students. He was one of the Agudath Israel delegates to the movement's world convention in the United States in 1946, and left Shanghai for San Francisco on the Marine Lynx on 11 August 1946. (United Nations Archives, UNRRA China Office records.)
• List of persons processed by the American Joint Distribution Committee's migration department, Shanghai, 1–30 April 1946 (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, list 48686)
  The American Joint Distribution Committee's migration department in Shanghai processed Lejb Wassercug for emigration in April 1946, according to its list for that month, indexed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The name occurs once on the register, and the register already records this line's arrival in Shanghai.
• Shanghai Ledger, page 137 (left): entries 1090-1097, registered 16-23 August 1941: Messer Juliusz (mer… — Mordchaj (office clerk, b. 1911) and Izrael (merchant, b. 1909). Library of Congress digitisation of the Polish Consulate's register
• Shanghai Ledger, page 137 (right): entries 1090-1097, registered 16-23 August 1941: Messer Juliusz (me… — Mordchaj (office clerk, b. 1911) and Izrael (merchant, b. 1909). Library of Congress digitisation of the Polish Consulate's register

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