Najman Jankiel

Najman Jankiel received transit visa no. 1740 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 14 August 1940. The register records rabbi - mir yeshiva, aged 30.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

30

Occupation

Rabbi - Mir Yeshiva

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife Chaja (23), daughter Fejga (0)

The journey

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

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Chaja — wife, aged 23
• Fejga — daughter, aged 0

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 4158, Jankiel Najman, born 1909, who had come from Baranowicze; the year agrees with the register's age and Baranowicze agrees with the archive's other records.
• 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 216 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: aged 32, a rabbi, Polish; relatives abroad: a father-in-law, Rabbi P. Aronowicz, 76 A Sivevright Avenue, Johannesburg, South Africa; a cousin, Rabbi S. Wasserman, 161 Clinton Street, New York.
• 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 Jankiel Najman, 1946: born about 1909, 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 Jankiel Najman, born about 1909 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1946 on the General M. C. Meigs. The register's compiled line gives 1910, and the two are 1 year 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 1946 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 385, image 469, read by the archive on 20 September 2026.
• 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)
  UNRRA's China Office registered him in Shanghai in 1946 among the Polish rabbis and rabbinical students, as a rabbi who wished to go on to South Africa. (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 1909 in Brzesc. His wife Chaja is listed with him, born in 1916 in Baranowicze, and their four children, two of them born in Shanghai. (United Nations Archives, UNRRA China Office records.)
• Polish rabbis and rabbinical students registered with UNRRA, Shanghai (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, China Office;… — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, list 48676
  The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration's Shanghai register of Polish rabbis and rabbinical students, indexed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, has Jankiel Najman, rabbi, arrived in China in Oct 1941, wishing to go to the United States. The name occurs once on the register; the list is of the refugees who came from Vilna by way of Kobe, and an arrival in Shanghai in Oct 1941 is the route this line is recorded as taking.
• 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)
  Jankiel Najman 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.
• La-karov ve-la-rachok, 3 October 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 3 October 1946, lists Jankiel Yakob Najman: born 1909 at Brzesc, a rabbi, arrived in 1941 from Lithuania; the year and the trade agree with the 1940 Vilna refugee list, the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
• 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 Jankiel Najman, born in 1909, of Baranowicze, who was in Wilno during the war; the year and the town agree with this register line. Credit: Yad Vashem Archives.

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