Oskar Wajsbrem

Oskar Wajsbrem received transit visa no. 226 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 30 July 1940. The register records engineer, aged 32.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

32

Occupation

Engineer

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife Elka (19)

The journey

Reached Japan; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for Australia.

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Elka — wife, aged 19

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

• 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 350 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: aged 33, born at Warsaw, an engineer, Polish; relatives abroad: a cousin, Ofenberger, 50 Pine Street, New York.
• "Escape from the Nazis — two years to reach here", The Australian Jewish Herald (Melbourne), 17 July 1941, p. 1: Oskar Wajsbrem, his wife and her parents Mr and Mrs Sokol, newly arrived from Japan
  The Australian Jewish Herald of 17 July 1941 reported that Oskar Wajsbrem, an engineer specialising in industrial organisation from Warsaw, had arrived in Australia a fortnight earlier with his wife and her parents, Mr and Mrs Sokol, two years after leaving Poland: from Lithuania an eleven-day train journey across Siberia to Vladivostok, by boat to Kobe, three months in Japan where the twenty-seven Jewish families of Kobe cared for some two thousand refugees, and permits obtained through the Polish consul for Australia. The register has Oskar Wajsbrem, 32, and on the next line his wife Elka, 19; the article makes her the daughter of Abram and Jenta Sokol (Nos. 225 and 810), who travelled with them.
• Find a Grave memorials 200228079, 200228078 and 200228038 — Oskar Wajsbrem (1909–6 Jan 1997), Helen Wajsbrem née Sokol (12 Apr 1922–9 Mar 1980) and Abram Sokol (1890–31 Dec 1958, St Kilda), with Jetta Makon Sokol (1890–1969); Jewish sect…
  Oskar and Helen Wajsbrem are buried side by side in the Jewish section of the Melbourne General Cemetery. The memorials, with photographs of the stones, give Oskar born 1909 and died 6 January 1997, and Helen, née Sokol, born 12 April 1922 and died 9 March 1980. The register's Elka, 19 in 1940, became Helen.
• 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 Oskar Wajsbrem, aged 31, of Warsaw, who was in Wilno during the war; his age and his city agree with this register line. The register's Oscar Wajzbrem, No. 2038, is the compilation's duplicate entry for this same man. 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 6063, Wajsbrem Oskar, born 1908 at Warsaw, who came from Warsaw; the year agrees with the age the register gives, and the town with what the archive already holds.

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