Chil Benjamin Fiszof received transit visa no. 2070 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 21 August 1940. The register records rabbinical student - telshe yeshiva, aged 16.
What the register records
Nationality as recorded
Polish
Age in 1940
16
Occupation
Rabbinical Student - Telshe Yeshiva
The journey
Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; registered in Kobe for USA.
What is known
Benjamin Fishoff is described as a 'Sugihara Survivor' interviewed in the documentary, one of the Jewish refugees saved by Chiune Sugihara's transit visas.
Born into a family of Gerrer chasidim in Wloczewa, Poland (family later moved to Lodz in 1925), Benny Fishoff traveled as a teenager to live with his grandparents in Vilna at the start of WWII. He received a lifesaving Sugihara visa to Japan and eventually made it to Shanghai along with the Mirrer Yeshiva bochurim, where he connected with the Amshinover Rebbe. After the war he settled in New York (Brooklyn, then Forest Hills, Queens), became a successful electronics importer/exporter and prominent philanthropist, and served as longtime chairman of Agudath Israel of America. He died September 20, 2021 at age 97.
Where this comes from
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… 70; age 19; b. Wloszczowa; yeshiva; cousin H.Rotstein 1020 Boynton Av Bronx NY, friend Rabbi Bloch 14 Jefferson str New York
The list of seventy-four — Netherlands Legation, Tokyo, 18 March 1941. On the Legation's letterhead (Gezantschap der Nederlanden), certifying 'that the undermentioned persons all of Polish nationality do not need a Netherlands visa in or… Named at position 20 of seventy-four on the Netherlands Legation's certificate of 18 March 1941 — the list of the people who reached Tsuruga on Sugihara's transit visas without a Curaçao endorsement, were refused permission to land, and whose ship was turned back towards Vladivostok. The Legation typed the name as "Fiszow Chil". A pencilled note beside it gives this register number, which is how the two records are joined. A later hand adds the name he is known by: Benjamin Fishoff.
