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.

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…
  #354, 20, Warsaw, yeshiva, Polish; acount Ewa Wassell 1098 Gerard Ave Bronx NY
• 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 — LEDGER ENTRY READ: 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 file 53 — “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 Comm…
  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.
• Shanghai Ledger, page 137 (left): entries 1090-1097, registered 16-23 August 1941: Messer Juliusz (merchant, b. 22 Nov 1903 Krakow, on a Copenhagen-consulate passport; wife Irena Stella b. 1913 Warsaw, 'added in Stockholm 18 Sep 1940'),…
• Shanghai Ledger, page 137 (right): entries 1090-1097, registered 16-23 August 1941: Messer Juliusz (merchant, b. 22 Nov 1903 Krakow, on a Copenhagen-consulate passport; wife Irena Stella b. 1913 Warsaw, 'added in Stockholm 18 Sep 1940'),…