Owsei Feldberg

Owsei Feldberg received transit visa no. 3 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 16 July 1940. The register records medical, aged 38.

Documents

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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.

3 Lithuanian Owsei Feldberg transit 7/16/1940 2

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 an… — the second half of which is the Michael he registered under in New York.
  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.
• Kauno regioninis valstybes archyvas (Kaunas Regional State Archive), fond 66, inventory 7, file 423 — “FELDBERGAS Ovsei-Michel”, 26 February 1940. Published on Lithuania's ePaveldas digital heritage portal. The Lithuanian form of the nam…
  Ovsei-Michel Feldbergas, in the Kaunas archive on 26 February 1940 — five months before Sugihara wrote his visa. The register has him as Owsei Feldberg. The Lithuanian record is the one that carries his second given name, and that second name is what he used in America.
• 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… — it is a return crossing by two American citizens. Its interest is that it shows what became of them.
  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.
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Ovsei Michel Feldbergas, 1940: born about 1903, Lithuania. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at Sa…
  FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Ovsei Michel Feldbergas, born about 1903 in Lithuania, arriving at San Francisco in 1940. The register's compiled line gives 1902, and the two are 1 year apart. The name occurs once on the register, and a passenger born in Lithuania landing at San Francisco in 1940 fits the route through Japan, so the entry is taken as this person's under the archive's rule of 19 September 2026 for records from the route.
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Ovsei Michel Feldbergas, 1940: born about 1903, Lithuania. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at Sa…
  The manifest sheet itself has him on the Kamakura Maru, which sailed from Kobe on 5 September 1940 for San Francisco: Feldbergas Ovsei Michel, aged 37, married, a merchant, Lithuanian, born at Surviliškis, last permanent residence Kaunas, travelling on a quota immigration visa, No. 124, issued at Kaunas on 28 May 1940, two months before the Sugihara visa that let him cross Japan. He was the only Sugihara-list traveller on that sheet; the other eleven passengers were Russians from Harbin and Danes. He landed in the second half of September 1940, among the very first of the register's people to reach America.
• Petition for naturalization of Ovsei-Michel Feldbergas (Michael Feldberg), US District Court for the Southern District of New York, 1943 (NARA M1972, film 1494; read on FamilySearch, "New York, U.S. District and Circuit Court Naturalizat…
  Ovsei-Michel Feldbergas was naturalised in the Southern District of New York in 1943, under the name Michael Feldberg: the court's index gives his birth as 10 June 1902 at Surviliškis, Lithuania, his age as forty, and names his wife. The birth date is the one his 1942 draft card gives on this page, and the register's compiled age is the same. (FamilySearch's copy of the National Archives' court records, petitions for naturalization of the Southern District of New York.)
• 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…
• MICHAEL FELDBERG'S UNITED STATES DRAFT REGISTRATION CARD, serial 813, order number 10864, filed in the Bronx under the fourth registration of 1942 — identified an… — the second half of which is the Michael he registered under in New York.
• 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…

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