Potasznik Mendel

Potasznik Mendel received transit visa no. 1485 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 7 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student - radin yeshiva, aged 32.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

32

Occupation

Rabbinical Student - Radin Yeshiva

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

husband of #1484

The journey

Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; 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 245 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: aged 33, born at Wolozyn, a yeshiva student; relatives abroad: an aunt, Abramovitz, 524 Rutkin Street, Brooklyn, New York; an uncle, I. Rusatski, 913 North 5th Street, Philadelphia.
• 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 1441) — the consulate's register of Polish citizens who reached the city, 1934-1943 — the ledger reads: Potasznik Mendel, born 2 April 1908 Wolozyn; registered 13 December 1941; 912/10 East Seward Road; Tokyo-issued passport of 3 December 1941 — found on reading the page.
• 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)
  A list of the same year gives his birth as 1908, in Wolozyn. He was listed among the passengers for the General Meigs to the United States in July 1946. (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 1908 in Wolozyn. (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)
  Mendel Potasznik 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.
• Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem — the card file of Jewish refugees from Poland who found refuge in various countries, 1939–1941
  Yad Vashem's card file of Jewish refugees from Poland who found refuge in various countries, 1939–1941, has a card for Mendel Patasznik, aged 31, of Wołożyn, who was in Wilno during the war; his age and his town agree with this register line. Credit: Yad Vashem Archives.

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