Zak Chaim

Zak Chaim received transit visa no. 1776 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 15 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student - lubavitsch yeshiva, aged 19.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

19

Occupation

Rabbinical Student - Lubavitsch Yeshiva

The journey

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

Where this comes from

• JDC Japan Emigration List — Kobe yeshivas, 1941 (Mir, Kamieniec, Slonim, Kleck, Radin, Telz, Lubavitch & others)
  1921 Biala Podl.; Lubavitcher Yeshiva
• 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 1476) — the consulate's register of Polish citizens who reached the city, 1934-1943 — the ledger reads: Zak Chaim Hersz, born 23 March 1921 Biala Podlaska, single; 35 Moulmein Road; registered 13 December 1941 on a passport issued by the Shanghai consulate itself (Z-54, 4 December 1941), valid to 3 December 1942.
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Chaim Hersz Zak, 1946: born about 1921, 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 Chaim Hersz Zak, born about 1921 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1946 on the General M. C. Meigs. The register's compiled line gives 1921, 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 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 384, image 450, 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)
  The list of students of the Lubavitch yeshiva Tomche Tmimim in Shanghai gives his birth as 28 March 1921, in Biala Podlaska. He was listed among the passengers for the General Meigs to the United States in July 1946 with the Polish rabbinical students of the '29 group'. (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 1921 in Biala Podlaska. (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)
  Chaim H Zak 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. The name occurs once on the register; 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 Chaim Hersz Zak, born in 1921, of Biała Podlaska, who was in Wilno during the war; the year and both his given names agree with this register line. Credit: Yad Vashem Archives.
• 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 6356, Zak Chaim Hersz, born 1921 at Biała Podlaska, who came from Biała Podlaska; the year and the town agree with what the archive already holds.

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