Beckelman Moses

Beckelman Moses received transit visa no. 1890 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 17 August 1940. Aged 34 in 1940.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

U.S.A.

Age in 1940

34

The journey

Destination given in the Kitade-Bluman list: USA.

Where this comes from

• "Moses Beckelman JDC Director Dies" — a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report printed in the Jewish Advocate (Boston), 15 December 1955, p. A9. Sent to the archive by David Rosen, 1 October 2026.
  He was the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee's man in the Baltic states. His obituary, a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report printed in the Jewish Advocate of Boston on 15 December 1955, says that Moses W. Beckelman was born in New York City, ‘first joined the JDC staff in 1939 and directed JDC programs in the Baltic States’, surveyed refugee problems in South America for the Joint in 1941–42, and from 1951 was its director-general for overseas operations, based in Paris. He died in New York City of a heart attack in December 1955, aged 49. The obituary does not mention Sugihara. It is taken as this line's because the register enters Moses Beckelman as an American, which is rare on it; an American of that name in Kaunas in August 1940 fits the Joint's representative there; and an age of 49 in 1955 agrees with the 34 the compiled list gives him in 1940. David Rosen, who found the obituary, also reads him in the San Francisco passenger lists leaving Shanghai on 25 April 1941 on the President Coolidge and landing on 11 May 1941; the archive has not yet read that line itself. Found by David Rosen, 1 October 2026.

×