Flakser Mendel

Flakser Mendel received transit visa no. 2108 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 21 August 1940. The register records journalist, aged 41.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polish

Age in 1940

41

Occupation

Journalist

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife Anna (21)

The journey

Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; registered in Kobe for Paraguay.

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Anna — wife, aged 21

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.

Where this comes from

• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Mendel Flakser, 1947: born about 1898, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Francisco)…
  FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Mendel Flakser, born about 1898 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1947 on the General W. H. Gordon. The register's compiled line gives 1899, 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 392, image 478, read by the archive on 20 September 2026.
• 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)
  A possible record, not yet confirmed as this person: 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 Mendel Rubin Flakser: born 1897 at Sulejow, a writer, arrived in 1940 by way of Siberia; the year agrees with the age the register gives, but the list does not place this arrival on the Lithuanian road (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
• 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…
  The Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register lists Mendel Rubin Flakser among the Polish and Lithuanian refugees of November 1940: aged 43, born at Sulejow, a journalist, who came from Vilnius, arrived on 20 November 1940 and left for Shanghai on 26 November. His age and trade agree with the register. Sugihara's typist wrote the name as Flakser Mandel.
• 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 Mendel Flakser, who was in Wilno during the war. The archive attaches it under its rule of 19 September 2026: the card file is a record of the refugees in Wilno, where the road through Sugihara's visas began; the full name occurs once on the register; and the card places the person in Wilno in 1939–41, on the road to Sugihara's visas. Credit: Yad Vashem Archives.
• 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 1487, Mendel-Rubin Flakser, born in 1897.

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