Szafran Icek

Szafran Icek received transit visa no. 1491 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 7 August 1940. The register records rabbi - lublin yeshiva, aged 25.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

25

Occupation

Rabbi - Lublin Yeshiva

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife Basia (21)--teacher beth jacob, brother of #1493

The journey

Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; registered in Kobe for USA.

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Basia — wife, aged 21

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.

Where this comes from

• List of Refugees, Vilna, 1940 — JDC Archives, New York, collection AR 33/44, file 00876. The contemporary register of Polish Jewish refugees in Lithuania, running to more than nine thousand numbered entries; the fullest independent check…
  The 1940 Vilna refugee list has, at entry 5563, Icek Szafran, born 1914 at Gaworowo, who had come from Gaworowo; the year agrees with the register's age.
• 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 317 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: aged 27, born at Goworowo, a rabbi; relatives abroad: an uncle, Ben Safran, 125 Brighton 11th Street, Brooklyn, New York; B. Brooks, 1457 46th Street, Brooklyn, 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 1033); the names closely match this register line — approved by the owner's review, 19 Aug 2026 — the ledger reads: Szafran Icek, RABBI, born 14 May 1914 Goworowo, single; 225/7 Kungping Road; passport S-195 issued by the Shanghai consulate 21 May 1941 — brother of Josek (entry 1021, No.1493).
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database — 'List of Polish war refugees in China', 242 names: the Polish (Sugihara-stream) group in wartime Shanghai, among them Gedalia Zupnik of the Mir, Chaim Ba…
  USHMM 'List of Polish war refugees in China' (242 names); the names closely match this register line — approved by the owner's review, 19 Aug 2026
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Icek Szafran, 1947: born about 1915, 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 Icek Szafran, born about 1915 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1947 on the Marine Adder. The register's compiled line gives 1915, 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 1947 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 388, image 722, read by the archive on 20 September 2026.
• 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 1914 in Goworowo. His wife Basia is listed with him, born in 1918 in Ostroleka, and their two children, born in Shanghai. (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)
  Icek Szafran 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.

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