Bernsztejn Zelda

Bernsztejn Zelda received transit visa no. 1882 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 17 August 1940. The register records tailor, aged 33.

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

33

Occupation

Tailor

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

daughter Masha (9), brother of #1288

The journey

Reached Japan; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for Canada and then USA.

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Masha — daughter, aged 9

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

Masha Bernstein and her mother Zelda followed the same escape route as the Melamdoviches, reaching Japan about two months later and the United States via Canada in August 1941, just ahead of the German invasion. Her father Mordechai (Matvey), an active Bundist, was arrested in 1940 and sent to Siberia. Masha (later Masha Leon) became a reporter and columnist for the Forward in New York.

Masha Leon (nee Bernstein), a Sugihara Survivor, escaped Nazi-occupied Warsaw with her parents Zelda and Mordechai W. Bernstein, reaching Kaunas, Lithuania in 1940. Using a Sugihara transit visa, the family traveled to Tsuruga (landing February 1941) and then Kobe, Japan, where Masha turned 10 and learned Japanese and the song 'Sakura.' Masha Leon became a longtime Forward columnist and died in 2017; she met Yukiko Sugihara many times and attended the 1994 opening of Sugihara's memorial in Yaotsu.

Masha Leon (nee Bernstein) fled Nazi-occupied Warsaw, traveling across Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, and Soviet Russia to reach Japan. While hiding in Vilnius, her mother traveled at night to Kaunas to wait outside the Japanese Consulate for a Sugihara visa; the family used the code phrase 'Uncle Sam has arrived' to signal its arrival. Masha Leon died April 5, 2017.

Masha and her mother, Zelda Bernstein, followed a similar route to freedom as did the Melamdoviches, coming to Japan two months after we did and to the United States via Canada in August 1941 just ahead of the ax man

Sugihara issued 2,139 transit visas; descendants of Sugihara Survivors now number close to 40,000. Her photo (with parents) is displayed in the USHMM "Flight and Rescue" exhibition.

the family code for its arrival was the telegram "Uncle Sam has arrived." Masha Leon's Sugihara transit visa was NUMBER 1882.

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 345, Zełda Berensztejn, born 1907 at Byton, who came from Warszawa; the year agrees with the register's compiled age, and the town with what the archive already holds for this line.
• 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 12 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: born 1907, with the birthplace written Byton/Slonim; relatives abroad: a sister, S. Golden, 1337 North Noyne Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.
• 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 43 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 34, born at Byton, a tailor, who arrived in Japan from Vilnius on 24 February 1941.
• US arrival manifest: Zelda Bernsztejn, Seattle, 1941
  "Seattle Passenger Lists", FamilySearch, entry for Zelda Bernsztejn, 1941. Ship: Heian Maru. Matched from the Heian Maru's Polish-born passenger list (198 people, of whom 57 matched the register). Register No.1882 'Bernsztejn Zelda' records age 33; the manifest gives born 1907, arriving 1941.
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database — the Flight and Rescue electronic dataset (source 20725): USHMM's own transcription of the Kaunas register, 2,140 persons with citizenship, visa type, iss…
  USHMM Flight and Rescue dataset: arrived in Japan 24 Feb 1941 (line 1882)
• "Washington, King, Seattle, Passenger Lists, 1890-1957", FamilySearch — index entry for Zelda Bernsztejn, 1941: born about 1907, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1383 (passenger and crew lists of vessels arriving at Sea…
  FamilySearch's index of the Seattle passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Zelda Bernsztejn, born about 1907 in Poland, arriving at Seattle in 1941. The register's compiled line gives 1907, and the two agree. The name occurs once on the register, and a Polish-born passenger landing at Seattle in 1941 fits the route through Japan, so the entry is taken as this person's under the archive's rule of 19 September 2026 for records from the route.
• JDC Archives, New York, collection AR 33/44 file 53 (the Jewish Community of Kobe's returns to the JDC, 1941; Set I, item 00761) — Set I pp. 5–7 — "List… — "List of persons who left Japan for Shanghai in the month of July 1941", Nos. 1–15
  She left Yokohama on the Heian Maru ("Heyan M.") on 17 July 1941, bound for Canada (the Jewish Community of Kobe's list of departures, July 1941 (JDC Archives, AR 33/44 file 53)). The list reads: "Bernstein Zelda [Zalda], ″ Mesza". (Heian Maru ("Heyan M."), Yokohama, 17 July 1941, destination Canada.)
• Leo Melamed: Escape to the Futures - Sugihara's Stand
• Tablet Magazine — Masha Leon Sugihara survivor story
• Honolulu Festival 2017 report, 'Inspiring Story of Chiune Sugihara — Visas for Life' (Kitade keynote, 11-12 Mar 2017): Masha Leon, journalist, New York — arrived Tsuruga, stayed Kobe
• The HEIAN, arriving at Seattle in 1941: list or manifest of alien passengers, the sheet that names Jakub Kaliski — US National Archives, Record Group 85 (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arrivi…
• Arriving at Seattle: the continuation sheet, with the relatives named and the destinations, for the sheet that names Jakob Kalisky — US National Archives, Record Group 85 (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Passenger and Crew Lists…

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