Honigsberg Zelik

Honigsberg Zelik received transit visa no. 2078 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 21 August 1940. The register records factory manager buttons, aged 61.

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polish

Age in 1940

61

Occupation

Factory Manager Buttons

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

husband of #2080, father of #422

The journey

Reached Japan; registered in Kobe for USA.

What is known

The Honigberg family appears together on the list: Zelik (61, married, factory manager in the buttons trade), his wife Rajzla Matla (58, housewife), and their son Bronislaw (20, medical student). They are listed as consecutive entries, suggesting they traveled or were registered together as a family unit.

Zelik Honigberg — 61, a cotton-factory manager born in Russia, of Wilno — sailed from Yokohama on 26 April 1941 aboard the Asama Maru, holding American quota visa No.2383 issued at Yokohama on 17 March. Arrived San Francisco about 10 May, admitted 15 May 1941. He stayed in California: the naturalization index and his 1942 draft registration carry him as Zelik Zachary Honigberg.

Bronislaw Honigberg — a twenty-year-old MEDICAL STUDENT born in Warsaw — sailed from Yokohama on 26 April 1941 aboard the Asama Maru with Zelik and Rajzla Matla, on American quota visa No.2385 (Yokohama, 17 March 1941). Arrived San Francisco about 10 May, admitted 15 May 1941.

Factory Manager Buttons Housewife Medical Student

Where this comes from

• 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 2364, Zelig Honigberg, born 1879 at Wierzchowice, who came from Warszawa; the year agrees with the register's compiled age, and the town with what the archive already holds for this line.
• 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 107 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: born 1879 at Wierzbowiec; relatives abroad: a friend, Otto Gerdau, 533/541 Canal Street, New York.
• 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 285 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 62, born at Wierzbowiec, a manufacturer, who arrived in Japan from Vilnius on 23 February 1941.
• US arrival manifest: Zelik Honigberg, San Francisco 1941
  "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch, entry for Zelik Honigberg, 1941. NARA M1410, film 369. Ship: Asama Maru. Match: register No.2078 records age 61; the manifest gives age 61, born 1880. Arrived San Francisco 1941 on the Asama Maru. FamilySearch 'similar records' a
• Larisa Proulx, "From Warsaw to San Francisco", Immigrant Voices, Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation - written from the family US immigration interrogation file
  The family reached San Francisco on 10 May 1941 aboard the Asama Maru and were not admitted. They were held at the immigration facility at 801 Silver Avenue on suspicion about who had paid their fares, and interrogated separately on 14 May with two inspectors, a secretary and a Polish interpreter present. They were admitted that same afternoon. They had fled Warsaw for Wilno before October 1940, and so were not in the city when the ghetto was sealed. Zelik had run a mother-of-pearl button firm employing some five hundred people - the register's own entry for him reads 'Factory Manager Buttons'. His wife is given as a housewife, their son Bronislaw as a medical student. What got them out was a friend in New York: Allan Gerdau, who held money Zelik's European agents had sent him for safekeeping and used it to buy the steamship tickets. No travel agency in Wilno could sell the family all the tickets, and the tickets had to be in hand before the American visas would issue. Without him they could not have left. One person did not go: Zelik's sister-in-law Aurelia stayed in Warsaw. The account says her story is unknown, and this archive does not guess at it.
• 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 23 Feb 1941 (line 2078)
• Fragment of a typed nominal roll of refugees, photographed close in. Each line is numbered and gives surname, given name, age, sex, marital state and occupation, with a hand-written code entered in the left margin against every name. The…
  The roll gives his age as 61, exactly the register's age for 1940, and his occupation as factory manager with the word 'buttons' added by hand - the same trade, in the same words, that the register records for this entry. He is entered as married, immediately above Rajzla Matla Honigberg, and the register pairs the two.
• Manifest of alien passengers, SS Asama Maru, sailing from Yokohama April (day uncertain) 1941 (day uncertain), arrived San Francisco May 10 1941 (US National Archives, M1410, film 369; read on FamilySearch's copy)
  The passenger list held by the National Archives (FamilySearch's copy) shows that he came on an American immigration visa issued at Yokohama on 17 March 1941, with his passage paid by the Otto Gerdau Company of Canal Street, New York, the firm he had named in Kobe as his contact abroad. It gives his birthplace as Wierzbowiec.
• 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 Zelik Onikberg, an industrialist born in 1879, of Warsaw, married to Rajzla, who was in Wilno during the war; the year, the city, his trade and his wife's name agree with this register line. Credit: Yad Vashem Archives.
• USHMM — Honigberg family papers (Sugihara transit visas, Vilnius→Japan→USA, 1940)
• Gonikberg family history post (owner submission, Jul 2026): Zelig Honigberg — "the button king of Eur… — marked Det./deported), Białystok→Vilno railway ticket, and the famous photo of Sugihara seeing refugees off at Kaunas railway station
• Fragment of a typed nominal roll of refugees, photographed close in. Each line is numbered and gives surname, given name, age, sex, marital state and occupation, with a hand-written code entered in the left margin against every name. The…
• FamilySearch passenger-list records (searched 10 Aug 2026, lead from the owner): Fiszhaut couple — Seattle Passenger Lists 1890-1957 (NARA M1383, film 261), Solomon Henryk Fiszhaut (37, b.1904 Poland) and Paulina Fiszhaut (b.1911 Poland)…
• S.S. Asama Maru manifest, sheet 13 — List or Manifest of Alien Passengers, sailed Yokohama 26 April 1941, a… — US quota visas Nos.2383-2385 issued Yokohama 17 Mar 1941, last permanent residence Wilno; all three admitted 15 May 1941, Sec.5

and 2 further records, shown on the full entry.

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