Owsei Feldberg received transit visa no. 3 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 16 July 1940. The register records medical, aged 38.
What the register records
Nationality as recorded
Lithuanian
Age in 1940
38
Occupation
Medical
The journey
Reached Japan; registered in Kobe for USA.
What is known
Transit visa No. 3 issued on 16 July 1940 to Owsei Feldberg, a Lithuanian national.
Where this comes from
MICHAEL FELDBERG'S UNITED STATES DRAFT REGISTRATION CARD, serial 813, order number 10864, filed in the Bronx under the fourth registration of 1942 — identified and given to this archive by Prof. Dr Ruth Leiserowitz, 27 August 2026. He gi… Prof. Dr Ruth Leiserowitz identifies this line with MICHAEL FELDBERG of the Bronx, who registered for the American draft in 1942 giving his birth as 10 June 1902 at Surviliskis, Lithuania. Her ground is a Lithuanian record of his in the Kaunas Regional Archive which gives him a DOUBLE NAME, OWSEJ-MIKHEL: Owsej is the name the consulate wrote on this register, Mikhel the name he used in New York. She adds that he was a merchant, in Klaipeda and Kaunas and afterwards in New York, and that his wife Janet — also Lithuanian, a dentist, whom he married in June 1938 — had begun her own naturalization in March 1940, which suggests she reached America first and he followed. THIS IDENTIFICATION IS OFFERED AS PROBABLE RATHER THAN SETTLED. What carries it is the double name, not the surname alone. What is still missing is a document that puts this Michael Feldberg on the route itself — a Kaunas residence, a sailing out of Japan, an arrival. Until one is found, the story of how he crossed is an inference and is not stated here as fact.
United States Selective Service registration card, D.S.S. Form 1 (rev. 1-1-42), serial 813, order no. 10864 — MICHAEL FELDBERG, born 10 June 1902 at Surwilishky (Surviliskis), Lithuania; aged 39; living at 265 McClellan Street, the Bronx… The other end of the same life. Born 10 June 1902, he was thirty-eight in July 1940, which is exactly the age the compiled register gives this line. Ovsei-Michel became Michael; the Kaunas archive kept the first name and the Bronx draft board kept the second. By the time he signed this card he was working in a five-and-ten on East 167th Street, and the person who would always know where he was is Janet Feldberg, at his own address. Two cautions belong with this. The compiled register gives No. 3 the occupation “Medical”, and this card has him working in a five-and-ten — which is an ordinary thing for a refugee whose qualifications were not recognised, but it is a difference and not a confirmation. And the link between the Kaunas record and the Bronx card rests on the double given name, the surname, the nationality and an age that matches to the year; it does not rest on a document that carries both names at once. It is a strong reading, not a proved one.
U.S. Customs Form I-416, List of In-Bound Passengers (United States Citizens and Nationals), cabin class — RMS QUEEN ELIZABETH, sailed Southampton 8 October 1953, arrived New York 13 October 1953, list no. 102. Lines 21 and 22: FELDBERG,… Thirteen years after Kaunas, and on the other side of everything. Michael and Janet Feldberg come back into New York on the Queen Elizabeth in October 1953 — not as refugees on a transit visa but on the list of United States citizens, with American passports, from Philadelphia, with eleven pieces of baggage between them. Both are entered as born in Lithuania. TENTATIVE: this is joined to No. 3 by the name Michael Feldberg, the Lithuanian birth and the wife Janet who appears at his own address on his 1942 draft card. There is no birth date on the passenger list, and Michael Feldberg is not a rare name in America.
The numbered Sugihara visa list, searchable text — the register of the visas issued at Kaunas, transcribed and reconciled by Dr George Bluman (University of British Columbia) and the researcher and author Akira Kitade. This is the text b…
THE QUEEN ELIZABETH'S INBOUND LIST OF UNITED STATES CITIZENS, sheet 102, sailing from Southampton on 8 October 1953 and arriving at New York on 13 October 1953 — given to this archive by Prof. Dr Ruth Leiserowitz, 27 August 2026. Lines 2…