Chil Benjamin Fiszof

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.

Documents

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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.

Benny, then a teenager, received a lifesaving visa to Japan due to the benevolence of Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese Consul to Lithuania. Reb Benny eventually made it to Shanghai along with the Mirrer Yeshiva bochurim, where he developed a connection to the Amshinover Rebbe. Reb Benny's name appears on the last page of these visas, as it was issued just moments before the program expired. In May of 2014, Reb Benny stood with Rabbi Yisroel Meir Lau and Assembly Member Dov Hikind at Temple Beth El and awarded Ambassador Sumio Kusaka, the Consulate General to Japan, a plaque for saving 2,139 Jewish souls.

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…
  Entry 70 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: aged 19, born at Wloszczowa, a yeshiva student; relatives abroad: a cousin, H. Rotstein, 1020 Boynton Avenue, Bronx, New York; a friend, Rabbi Bloch, 14 Jefferson Street, 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.
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Chil-Benjamin Fiszoff, 1947: born about 1923, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Fra…
  FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Chil-Benjamin Fiszoff, born about 1923 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1947 on the Marine Lynx. The register's compiled line gives 1924, 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 1947 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 387, image 234, read by the archive on 20 September 2026.
• Benjamin Fishoff, filmed interview, 2007 — on YouTube under the title 'BenjamenFishoffInt2007'. Pointed out to the archive by Hans de Vries, 29 September 2026.
  A filmed interview with Benjamin Fishoff, recorded in 2007, is on YouTube. The archive has not yet watched it through. As Hans de Vries describes it, Fishoff tells over an hour and eight minutes of the journey, of being sent back towards Vladivostok, and of being saved by a list signed at the Netherlands Legation in Tokyo; he reached the United States in 1947. That is the story of the seventy-four, on whose list he is No. 20, and 1947 agrees with the San Francisco arrival shown here. Pointed out by Hans de Vries, 29 September 2026.
• 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 1922 in Wleszczowa. (United Nations Archives, UNRRA China Office records.)
• List of members of the United Board of Rabbis and Rabbinical Colleges, Shanghai (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, list 48661)
  Chil Fiszoff is named on the list of members of the United Board of Rabbis and Rabbinical Colleges in Shanghai, indexed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The name occurs once on the register; the Board was the body of the Polish rabbis and yeshiva students who reached Shanghai from Kobe in 1941, and their families, the route the register records for this line.
• Petition for naturalization No. 477326 of Benjamin Chil Fishoff, also known as Chil Benjamin Fiszof, US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, 1951 (NARA; read on FamilySearch, "New York, U.S. District and Circuit Court Nat…
  Chil Benjamin Fiszoff became Benjamin Chil Fishoff, a rabbi in Brooklyn. His petition for naturalization, filed in the Eastern District of New York in 1951, gives his birth as 14 December 1922 at Włoszczowa, his occupation as rabbi, his marriage at Brooklyn in August 1949, and his lawful entry for permanent residence at Niagara Falls, New York, over the Rainbow Bridge from Canada, on 28 October 1947, under the name Chil Benjamin Fiszof; he was naturalised on 13 February 1951. The birth date and town agree with the Kobe community's list for this line, and the name occurs once on the register. (FamilySearch's copy of the National Archives' court records; its index also has him passing through Honolulu by air in 1948.)
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Chil-Benjamin Fiszoff, 1947: born about 1923, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Fra…
  The manifest sheet itself has him as Fiszoff Chil-Benjamin, aged 24, single, a student, Polish, Hebrew, born at Łódź in Poland, last permanent residence Shanghai, travelling on a non-quota immigration visa, No. 646 under section 4(a), issued at Shanghai on 20 September 1946, and a Polish passport No. 015844; the inspector's note has him admitted at San Francisco on 30 January 1947. The visa was the kind issued to students and ministers of religion, which fits a yeshiva student who became a rabbi; his later petition records a second, permanent entry from Canada in October 1947.
• La-karov ve-la-rachok, 28 March 1946 — the Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
  The Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai, printed by the Jewish Agency Search Bureau's bulletin La-karov ve-la-rachok on 28 March 1946, lists Chil Benjamin Fiszoff: born 1922 at Wloszczowa, a yeshiva student, arrived in 1941 from Lodz; the year, the town and the trade agree with the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
• Flyer for Junichi Kajioka's short documentary 'Sugihara Survivors: Jewish and Japanese, Past and Future' (25 minutes, Japan/UK, 2017), with notes on Akira Kitade's search for the people in the Japan Tourist Bureau album; five pages.
• Benny Fishoff Z”l: Unassuming Forest Hills Philanthropist Was ‘Ambassador For Torah Jewry’
• Honolulu Festival 2017 report, 'Inspiring Story of Chiune Sugihara — Visas for Life' (Kitade keynote,… — Amakusa Maru passenger sent back to Vladivostok for lack of papers, later admitted via Kobe community's help; five sons, 28 grandsons

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