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.
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.
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… No.107, 1879 Wierzbowiec; friend Otto Gerdau 533/541 Canal str 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… No 285; age 62; born Wierzbowiec; manufact.; arr 23.2; from Vilno
hunt/familysearch: 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.
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.
Gonikberg family history post (owner submission, Jul 2026): Zelig Honigberg — "the button king of Europe" — with NARA San Francisco ship-manifest excerpts (Honigberg Zelik 61 factory manager/Button, Rajzla Matla 58, Bronislaw 20 medical…