Honigsberg Rajzla-Matla

Honigsberg Rajzla-Matla received transit visa no. 2080 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 21 August 1940. Aged 57 in 1940.

Documents

Click a document to see it larger.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polish

Age in 1940

57

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife of #2078, mother of #422, son Bronislaw (20)

The journey

Reached Japan; registered in Kobe for USA.

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Bronislaw Honigberg — son, aged 19, though the ledger says 20, born Poland, 1921

The register recorded visa holders. It did not reliably record the wives and children who travelled on somebody else’s visa, so these people have no entry of their own and cannot be searched for. Where the archive has recovered a name, it is here.

What is known

Rajzla Matla Honigberg (58, born Opole, Poland) sailed from Yokohama on 26 April 1941 aboard the Asama Maru with Zelik and Bronislaw — manifest sheet 13, one line apart. Her American quota visa, No.2384, was issued at Yokohama on 17 March 1941; the family's last permanent residence is recorded as Wilno. Arrived San Francisco about 10 May, admitted 15 May 1941.

Where this comes from

• US arrival manifest: Rajzla Matla Honigberg, San Francisco 1941
  "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch, entry for Rajzla Matla Honigberg, 1941. NARA M1410, film 369. Ship: Asama Maru. Match: register No.2080 reads 'Honigsberg ajzla', age 57 - the ledger lost the initial letter. The manifest gives RAJZLA MATLA, age 58, born 1883, re
• 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.
• US arrival manifest: Bronislaw Honigberg, San Francisco 1941
  "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch, entry for Bronislaw Honigberg, 1941. NARA M1410, film 369. Ship: Asama Maru. Match: NOT A REGISTER ENTRY. The ledger's family note against No.2080 reads 'son Bronislaw (20)' and gives him no line of his own. The manifest names Br
• 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 2080)
• 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 carries the double given name Rajzla Matla exactly as the register has it, gives her age as 58 against the register's 57 for 1940, and enters her as married on the line below Zelik Honigberg, whom the register names as her husband. The line below hers is Bronislaw Honigberg, aged 20 - the name and the age of the son the register records with her.
• 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)
  She came with her husband Zelik and their son Bronisław, a medical student born in Warsaw, on American immigration visas issued at Yokohama on 17 March 1941, according to the passenger list held by the National Archives (FamilySearch's copy). The list gives her birthplace as Opole.
• 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 Rajzla Onikberg, born in 1881, of Warsaw, married to Zelik, who was in Wilno during the war; the year and her husband'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
• 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
• Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, Immigrant Voices No.853: "From Warsaw to San Francisco" (by Larisa Proulx) — the Honigberg family's arrival file: fled Warsaw to Wilno before October 1940; US visas obtained at Yokohama; Asama…

×