Finkelstein Teodor

Finkelstein Teodor received transit visa no. 1680 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 13 August 1940. The register records merchant, aged 41.

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

German

Age in 1940

41

Occupation

Merchant

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife Frida (41)

The journey

Reached Japan; reached Shanghai.

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Frida — wife, aged 41

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

Edith Hamer, daughter of Louis Finkelstein (No. 7), told the USC Shoah Foundation in 1998 (interview 54889, tape 2, 13:30) that 'one of my father's brothers also received a visa from Sugihara' — Theodor Finkelstein, No. 1680, is that brother; she adds (13:02) that another relative reached Bolivia on false papers.

Where this comes from

• 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…
  Entry 4 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 42, born at Kackeshen, a merchant, who arrived in Japan on 13 February 1941.
• La-karov ve-la-rachok, 28 March 1946 — the Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
  A possible record, not yet confirmed as this person: the Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai, printed in La-karov ve-la-rachok on 28 March 1946, lists Theodor Finkelstein, born 1899 at Gr. Kakchen, in the textile trade, arrived in 1941 from Kaunas by way of Siberia (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
• 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 community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad has Teodor Finkelstein and his wife: he was born in 1899 at Kackeschen, a German citizen, with a brother in New York. Sugihara's ledger lost the first letter of his given name; the list has it in full.
• Prof. Dr Ruth Leiserowitz (Berlin), correspondence of August 2026 — kinship and family connections among the visa holders, drawn from the Lithuanian records. What she established for each person is set out on that person's own entry. The…
• Oral history interview with Edith Hamer (née Finkelstein) — USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, interview 54889, Houston, Texas, 11 Novemb… — Theodor Finkelstein, No. 1680; another relative reached Bolivia on false papers (13:02)
• Catalogue still for the oral history of Edith Hamer (née Finkelstein) — USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, interview 54889 (the archive's public catalogue frame, 352x240); links to the testimony at vha.usc.edu/testimony/54889

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