Ambaras Ruchla

Ambaras Ruchla received transit visa no. 2004 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 20 August 1940. The register records shoemaker, aged 44.

Documents

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polish

Age in 1940

44

Occupation

Shoemaker

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

children (Szmul (17), Chaja (10)), husband Berek (47)

The journey

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

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Szmul — child, aged 17
• Chaja — child, aged 10
• Berek — husband, aged 47

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

Ruchla Leja Ambaras is No. 2004 on Sugihara's register, issued 20 August 1940. This card is the far end of that journey: her passage aboard the SS General Meigs from Shanghai to San Francisco in January 1949 — nine years and most of a continent after a consul in Kaunas wrote her name down. Refugees who left on those visas crossed Siberia to Japan and were moved on to Shanghai, where many waited out the war; this is the berth out. The Museum of Jewish Heritage holds it with her Polish travel document from Kaunas, the two ends of the same escape in one collection.

A Polish identity certificate — Zaświadczenie / Certificat — issued by the Legation of the Republic of Poland in Kaunas on 1 August 1940, confirming that Ruchla Leja Ambaras, born 1 May 1896 in Warsaw, was a Polish citizen entitled to travel. She is No. 2004 on Sugihara's register, issued nineteen days later. What stays with you is the three photographs attached to the sheet: hers, and two younger faces. Whatever the Legation was asked for that day, she was not trying to leave alone.

Ticket No. 42328 Name: Mrs. Ruchia Ambaras SS: General Meigs Voyage 16 From: Shanghai To: SF Emergency Class. (Does not entitle passenger to run of ship)

Poselstwo Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej w Kownie / Legation de Pologne \u00e0 Kaunas Za\u015bwiadczenie / Certificat AMBARAS \u00b7 RUCHLA-LEJA Rok urodzenia 1.V.1896 Miejsce urodzenia Warszawa

Where this comes from

• 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 13 Feb 1941 (line 2004)
• 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 1338) — found on reading the ledger page itself — the ledger reads: Ambaras Rachla (the register's 'Ruchla'), born 1 May 1895 Warsaw — named as wife on her husband Berek Ambaras's Shanghai entry 1338 (shoe-upper maker, b. 17 August 1893 Garwolin; '3 persons'), with daughter CHAJA born 2 October 1924 Warsaw; Tongshan Road; registered 13 December 1941 on a passport issued by the Shanghai consulate itself (A-48/2, 6 December 1941) — found on reading the page.
• World Jewish Congress, London: 'List of refugees in Shanghai', received in London 11 June 1946, 10 sheets, no list of nationalities — sheet 3, headed 'List of Jewish refugees registered with HIAS Shanghai, China, address c/o HIAS, Shangh…
  Sheet 3 of the World Jewish Congress's copy of the HIAS Shanghai list (received in London 11 June 1946; Arolsen Archives 3.1.1.3, DocID 78796289, read online 18 September 2026) lists an Ambaras family of four: 'Ber, 1893, Garwolin; Ruchla-L., 1896, Warsaw; Chaja, 1929; Szmul, 1923.' Ber's year and birthplace are exactly those of her husband Berek in the Polish Consulate's Shanghai ledger (17 August 1893, Garwolin), so the family is hers. The sheet's other years differ from the ledger's — 1896 against her 1 May 1895, and 1929 against the daughter Chaja's 2 October 1924 — and Szmul, born 1923, is not in the ledger's entry of three persons at all; who he was is an open question.
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Ruchla Ambaras, 1949: born about 1897, 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 Ruchla Ambaras, born about 1897 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1949 on the General M. C. Meigs. The register's compiled line gives 1896, 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 1949 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 402, image 824, read by the archive on 20 September 2026.
• American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Far Eastern Office, Shanghai: the list of persons who left Shanghai on the S.S. General Meigs and the S.S. Breckenridge on 1 January 1949, sent to the American Consulate General on 10 January…
  On 10 January 1949 the Joint's Far Eastern Office sent the American Consulate General at Shanghai its list of the people who had left Shanghai on the S.S. General Meigs on 1 January 1949. No. 110 on it is Ruchla Ambaras, Polish, bound for Italy. She is the only Ambaras on the register; its typed line has lost the first letter of her given name, and the list supplies it. The name is matched to this line because the full name occurs once on the register, the list is the Joint's own record of refugees leaving Shanghai, and a Polish refugee in Shanghai in 1949 is where the move from Kobe in 1941 had left the people of this register. The list gives no age and no birthplace.
• The JDC's Shanghai migration files, 1946–1950 — the index of emigrants from Shanghai (JDC Archives, New York, collection AR 33/44, file 14)
  Ruchla Ambaras is in the JDC's index of its Shanghai emigration cases on the case of her husband Berek, with their daughter, as the register's compiled line has the family. (JDC Archives, New York, AR 33/44, the Shanghai migration index)
• MJH NYC (2009.A.296): embarkation card of Ruchla Ambaras, SS General Meigs, Shanghai to San Francisco, Jan 1949
• MJH NYC (2009.A.291): Polish travel document of Ruchla Leja Ambaras, issued Kaunas 1 Aug 1940
• MJH eMuseum object 2009.A.286.1-2 (Gift in memory of Chaja Haas): Shanghai certificate of Berek Ambaras, with button pass, full-resolution scan 1/1 (media 25537)
• MJH eMuseum object 2009.A.287 (Gift in memory of Chaja Haas): Polish passport of Berek Ambaras, full-resolution scan 1/3 (media 25538)
• MJH eMuseum object 2009.A.288 (Gift in memory of Chaja Haas): JDC ration card of Berek Ambaras, full-resolution scan 1/2 (media 25541)
• MJH eMuseum object 2009.P.46 (Gift in memory of Chaja Haas): Berek Ambaras with others in front of gangplank of a ship, full-resolution scan 1/1 (media 25556)
• MJH eMuseum object 2009.A.290 (Gift in memory of Chaja Haas): Affidavit of Jewish Labor Committee for Ambaras Berek and family, full-resolution scan 1/1 (media 25546)
• MJH eMuseum object 2009.A.291 (Gift in memory of Chaja Haas): Polish travel document of Ruchla Leja Ambaras, full-resolution scan 1/2 (media 25547)

and 5 further records, shown on the full entry.

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