Rudolf Driller

Rudolf Driller received transit visa no. 25 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 26 July 1940. The register records manufacturer, aged 60.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

60

Occupation

Manufacturer

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

husband of #24

The journey

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

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 76 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: aged 51, German.
• 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…
  Entry 28 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 62, born at Rzeszow, a manufacturer.
• The Shanghai Ledger — register of Polish citizens kept by the Consulate of Poland in Shanghai, 1934-1943 (original at the Archives of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ref. 43/2003; digitised by the Library of Congress; indexed as…
  Registered with the Polish Consulate in Shanghai (ledger entry 1175); the names closely match this register line — approved by the owner's review, 19 Aug 2026 — the ledger reads: Driller Rudolf, director of an industrial works, born 1879 Rzeszow, married; Krakow passport of April 1938, extended in Krakow 1940, by the British Legation in Kaunas 17 July 1940 and by the Polish Embassy in Tokyo 30 May 1941 — the head of the Driller family of four.
• 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 25 Jan 1941 (line 25)
• Tadeusz Romer papers, Library and Archives Canada, MG 31 D 68, vol. 2 (microfilm reel C-10451, frame 1088): 'Lista obywateli polskich ewakuowanych z Dalekiego Wschodu… — cited by link only (Canadiana Heritage); frame image not republished
  Named on the Polish Embassy's list of Polish citizens evacuated from the Far East on the exchange ship s/s Kamakura Maru, Shanghai, 16 August 1942 — one of the 41 'civilian refugees' for whom Ambassador Romer obtained places (evacuee no. 66, 'DRILLER Rudolf'); the party sailed with Romer to Lourenco Marques and most went on to England
• Library and Archives Canada, Tadeusz Romer fonds, MG 31 D 68, reel C-10452, frame 625, via Canadiana Heritage — a Polish Embassy list of 41 Polish refugees, filed among Romer's Shanghai-period papers — page 1, entries 1-10 (Bajer, Bram a…
  On the Polish Embassy's list of 41 Polish refugees (Romer's Shanghai-period papers) (Romer fonds, reel C-10452, frame 625, entry 6): DRILLER Rudolf, przemysłowiec, born 1879; passport II-6/46ex38, Star. Pow. Kraków 15.4.38, do 8.12.43 — Holds a Palestine visa issued by the British Consulate in Kovno 22.7.40 No. 23406, valid 96 days. Wishes to go to the USA; was awaiting the State Department's favourable decision in Shanghai in December 1941 and the arrival of his family in the Union of South Africa.
• Trove (National Library of Australia) — The Australian Jewish Herald and The Australian Jewish News (Melbourne)
  Rudolf Driller settled in Melbourne, where he died in July 1961. *The Australian Jewish Herald* and *The Australian Jewish News* both published tributes to him on 18 August 1961, for his shloshim; they record that he was born in Rzeszów, of a well-known rabbinical family. (Credit: Trove, National Library of Australia.) The State's probate index records the death of Reuben Driller, manufacturer, on 22 July 1961 (Public Record Office Victoria, probate index); Reuben is the English form of his name, and the date is the month before the tributes.
• The censuses of Rzeszów, 1880–1910 (Archiwum Państwowe w Rzeszowie), as indexed by archival.name
  Rudolf Driller was born at Rzeszów on 21 August 1879 (the day is less certain than the year), the son of Moses Driller, a stall-keeper, and his wife Rifka of Jarosław: the 1880 and 1890 censuses of Rzeszów count him, as Rubin, in his parents' household at house 226, with a brother Mendel and sisters Braindel and Chaje Mirl. Rudolf was the civil name of a man called Rubin (Reuven), and the Victorian probate index on this page records him as Reuben Driller. The match rests on more than the name: the Kobe community's register gives this line the same birth year and birthplace, and the full name occurs once on the register. (Read on archival.name's index of the Rzeszów censuses; the census books are in the State Archive in Rzeszów.)
• Melbourne Chevra Kadisha — the burial records of the Melbourne Jewish community (mck.org.au)
  The Melbourne Chevra Kadisha's burial records close his story: Rudolf Driller died in Melbourne on 23 July 1961, aged 81, and was buried the next day in the Melbourne General Cemetery. Two things independent of the name tie the record to this man: the age gives 1880, the year of birth the register's compilers recorded for him, and Melbourne is the city where the Australian Jewish Herald had already placed him in 1941; on the register the surname belongs to his family and nobody else. Read in the Chevra Kadisha's online burial records, October 2026.

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