Kohn Chaskiel

Visa no. 1586 · Kaunas, 9 August 1940

Kohn Chaskiel received transit visa no. 1586 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 9 August 1940. The register records second hand dealer, aged 21.

Documents

Document — Kohn Chaskiel — Pass of the Shanghai Stateless Refugees Affairs Bureau, No. 4181, 1944, allowing Chaskiel Kohn (No. 1586), aged 26, to leave the designated area, with his photograph.

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded: Polnisch
Age in 1940: 21
Occupation: Second Hand Dealer

The journey

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

Travelled with, and never given a number

Wolf Kohn — father
Mariem Kohn — mother

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

Chaskiel Kohn of Rypin was twenty-one when visa No.1586 carried him east, and twenty-six when the Shanghai ghetto authorities photographed him for exit pass No.4181 — the little pink card that governed whether a soap-boiler from Tongshan Road could leave Hongkew for a day's work. His documents trace the whole exile: the Polish Association card renewed year after year through the ghetto, the pass stamped and re-stamped through the summer of 1944, and finally a 1946 Chinese travel permit in his old Polish passport — free at last to move, Nanking, Tientsin, Peiping, and eventually out. His daughter kept every scrap.

Where this comes from

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 Polish Sugihara-stream group in wartime Shanghai
"California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Chaskiel Majer Kohn, 1947: born about 1919, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Franc…
FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Chaskiel Majer Kohn, born about 1919 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1947. The register's compiled line gives 1919. The archive now takes him to be this line: the register writes it Chaskiel, where No. 397 is Majer Szulim, and the Kobe community's own list has Chaskiel-Majer Kohn, born 1918 at Rypin, with his parents.
"California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — the General W. H. Gordon, Shanghai 9 January to San Francisco 21 January 1947 (NARA M1410 roll 387), images 545–547, sheet 85 line 26
The General W. H. Gordon's manifest, Shanghai 9 January to San Francisco 21 January 1947, sheet 85, line 26, read by the archive on 3 October 2026: Kohn, Chaskiel Majer, 28, single, a student, a Polish national, born at Rypin, on a student's non-quota visa No. 587 issued at Shanghai on 13 September 1946, last residence Shanghai; the passage paid by the Joint Distribution Committee, going to the Mesivta Talmudical Seminary in Brooklyn, with Rabbi M. Ashkenazi of Shanghai named as his friend there. The Kobe community's register has a Kohn Chaskiel Majer, 22, born Rypin, arriving 24 February 1941. The archive now takes him to be this line: the register writes it Chaskiel, where No. 397 is Majer Szulim, and the Kobe community's own list has Chaskiel-Majer Kohn, born 1918 at Rypin, with his parents.
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 Jewish Community's 1941 list of refugees and their relatives abroad has, at entry 142, Chaskiel-Majer Kohn, born 1918 at Rypin, Polish, travelling with his father Wolf and his mother Mariem; his relatives abroad were an uncle, Abram Kohn, of 135 South 9th Street, Brooklyn, and a cousin, Boas Sonabend, in Brooklyn. The register writes this line Chaskiel and No. 397 Majer Szulim, so the archive takes Chaskiel-Majer to be this line; the compilers' age of 21 in 1940 agrees with a birth in 1918.
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: Chaskiel Majer Kohn, born in 1918, Polish passport No. K-150/2/19/41 issued in Shanghai on 4 December 1941. The UNRRA China Office kept the list with its 1946 registration of Polish rabbis and rabbinical students. (United Nations Archives, UNRRA China Office records.)
La-karov ve-la-rachok, 21 March 1946 — the Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
The Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai, printed by the Jewish Agency Search Bureau's bulletin La-karov ve-la-rachok on 21 March 1946, lists Chaskel Cohn: born 1918 at Rypin, a merchant, arrived in 1941 from Poland; the year and the town agree with the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
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 Chaskiel Majer Kohn, aged 22, born at Rypin, who reached Japan from Kovno on 24 February 1941.
La-karov ve-la-rachok, 31 March 1946 — the Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
The Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai, printed in La-karov ve-la-rachok on 31 March 1946, has Chaskiel-Mejer Kohn, born in 1918 at Rypin, a soap producer, who came in 1941 from Vilno, with Aron Binem Kohn, also of Rypin.
Pass of the Shanghai Stateless Refugees Affairs Bureau, No. 4181, 1944, allowing Chaskiel Kohn (No. 1586), aged 26, to leave the designated area, with his photograph.
Membership card (Legitymacja) of the Union of Poles in China (Związek Polaków w Chinach), Shanghai, for Chaskiel Kohn (No. 1586).
The Polish passport of Chaskiel Kohn (No. 1586) open at its visa pages, with Chinese travel endorsements of the 1940s.
A Chinese exit endorsement of the Shanghai police bureau in the Polish passport of Chaskiel Kohn (No. 1586), 1946–47.
A Chinese travel endorsement of the Shanghai police bureau in the Polish passport of Chaskiel Kohn (No. 1586), 1946–47.

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