Honigsberg Rajzla-matla received transit visa no. 2080 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 21 August 1940. Aged 57 in 1940.
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
hunt/familysearch: 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.
hunt/familysearch: 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
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.
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…