Grabie Majer received transit visa no. 1927 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 19 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student - lublin yeshiva, aged 20.
What the register records
Nationality as recorded
Polish
Age in 1940
20
Occupation
Rabbinical Student - Lublin Yeshiva
The journey
Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; registered in Kobe for USA.
What is known
Majer Grabie of Zdunska Wola — No. 1927 on the register, the third of four children of Rav Mosze Towia and Machisz Chana Grabie — fled his town under the September 1939 bombs, was seized that November with two hundred others, stood a day with raised arms, survived a mock execution at Sieradz and a bayonet wound at the prison gate, and decided to leave Poland. He crossed to the Soviet side through three days of forest, doubled back at Bialystok, bribed his way over the Lithuanian border to Eishyshok, and in Vilna was directed to Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin in exile. In 1940 came the transit visa for Japan with Curacao as its paper destination; the Trans-Siberian to Vladivostok, the ship to Kob… Majer Grabie of Zdunska Wola — No. 1927 on the register, the third of four children of Rav Mosze Towia and Machisz Chana Grabie — fled his town under the September 1939 bombs, was seized that November with two hundred others, stood a day with raised arms, survived a mock execution at Sieradz and a bayonet wound at the prison gate, and decided to leave Poland. He crossed to the Soviet side through three days of forest, doubled back at Bialystok, bribed his way over the Lithuanian border to Eishyshok, and in Vilna was directed to Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin in exile. In 1940 came the transit visa for Japan with Curacao as its paper destination; the Trans-Siberian to Vladivostok, the ship to Kobe, and, before Pearl Harbor, the move to Shanghai, where the Chachmei Lublin students learned at the Ohel Rachel synagogue and lived on the Joint's food packages — Majer shipping part of his own rations home to Poland until, after the assassination of Heydrich, all contact with his family ceased. As the family's account tells it — from survivors and local Poles, written down by his son Yeshiah Grabie — his parents were murdered when the Zdunska Wola ghetto was liquidated on 28 August 1942; his youngest brother Mordechai Yehuda was taken to Chelmno; his sister Tola passed through the Lodz ghetto to Auschwitz and alone of her family survived; his elder brother died on a death march three days before the end of the war. Majer married Marsha Kantoras in Shanghai and they stayed until April 1949, leaving shortly before the communists entered the city. The Shanghai consular ledger's entry 1385 — Grabie Majer, student, born 23 October 1919 Zdunska Wola, 35 Moulmein Road — is his line in the archive's own pages. Credit: the Grabie family, by Yeshiah (Shai) Grabie, 2026.
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… No 249; age 22; born Zdunska Wola; Yeshiva; arr 3.2; from Vilno
Photograph of Majer Grabie, supplied to the archive from a family collection. Portrait photograph of Majer Grabie, given to the archive by his family (Yeshiah 'Shai' Grabie, 24 August 2026) — published with the family's permission and credited to them. Attached to No. 1927 on the family's own identification of the man in the picture, not on any resemblance judged by the archive.
Yeshiah (Shai) Grabie family papers, email of 24 August 2026: the life of MAJER GRABIE (register No. 1927) written by the family — Zdunska Wola, third of four children of Rav Mosze Towia and Machisz Chana Grabie; flight of Sept 1939; the… The family's account of Majer Grabie (Yeshiah 'Shai' Grabie, 24 August 2026). It fixes what the register alone could not: he was of ZDUNSKA WOLA — which the Kobe arrival list independently records for this line ('No 249; age 22; born Zdunska Wola; Yeshiva; arr 3.2; from Vilno') — and the yeshiva he reached Lithuania with was CHACHMEI LUBLIN in exile, whose students later learned at the Ohel Rachel synagogue in Shanghai. Son of Rav Mosze Towia and Machisz Chana Grabie; arrested with ~200 others in November 1939 and imprisoned at Sieradz, where he was bayoneted; escaped through the forest to Soviet-occupied Poland and on through Bialystok, Eisiskes and Vilna. 1940 transit visa, Trans-Siberian to Vladivostok, ship to Kobe, then moved to Shanghai. Married Marsha Kantoras in Shanghai; they left in April 1949. His parents were murdered in the liquidation of the Zdunska Wola ghetto on 28 August 1942, as told by survivors and local Poles; of his siblings only his sister Tola survived. The register line and the family account agree on birthplace, yeshiva status and route.