Portowicz Josef

Portowicz Josef received transit visa no. 2026 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 20 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student - lubavitsch yeshiva, aged 19.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polish

Age in 1940

19

Occupation

Rabbinical Student - Lubavitsch Yeshiva

The journey

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

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…
  Entry 534 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 21, born at Wyszkow, a yeshiva student, who arrived in Japan on 14 February 1941.
• JDC Japan Emigration List — Kobe yeshivas, 1941 (Mir, Kamieniec, Slonim, Kleck, Radin, Telz, Lubavitch & others)
  No 113; 1920 Wyszkow; Polish
• 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 1440); the register line's repaired reading and the ledger agree exactly — matched on the repaired register name, approved under the owner's review of 19 Aug 2026 — the ledger reads: Portowicz Josef, born 15 November 1920 Wyszkow; registered 13 December 1941; 35 Moulmein Road (the Jewish Recreation Club); Tokyo-issued passport of 3 December 1941.
• JDC Archives, New York — Shanghai Migration Files, box index (AR 33/44, file 00014): the alphabetical index to the JDC's Shanghai emigration case files, 1946-1950 — some 2,640 case files covering about 5,400 persons, each family under on…
  JDC Shanghai Migration Files, case file no. 6265 — an emigration case file opened for the family in Shanghai after the war; the file itself can be requested from the JDC Archives (names closely match; approved under the owner's standing review)
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Josef Portowicz, 1946: born about 1920, 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 Josef Portowicz, born about 1920 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 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 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 466, 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 15 February 1920, in Wyszkow, and his Polish passport as No. P-95/2/21/41. 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'. His wife Gerda, born in Frankfurt in 1927, is listed with him. (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 1920 in Wiszkow. (United Nations Archives, UNRRA China Office records.)
• The JDC's Shanghai migration files, 1946–1950 — the index of emigrants from Shanghai (JDC Archives, New York, collection AR 33/44, file 14)
  The JDC's index of its Shanghai emigration cases lists a Josef Portowicz, with one other person, leaving for the United States; whether this is the Lubavitch yeshiva student of the register is not settled. (JDC Archives, New York, AR 33/44, the Shanghai migration index)
• 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 Josef Portowicz, born in 1920, of Otwock, who was in Wilno during the war. The archive attaches it under its rule of 19 September 2026: the card file is a record of the refugees in Wilno, where the road through Sugihara's visas began; the full name occurs once on the register; and the card places the person in Wilno in 1939–41, on the road to Sugihara's visas. 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 4516, Portowicz Josek, born 1920, who came from Otwock; the year agrees with what the archive already holds.

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