Lejzer Soroczkin

Lejzer Soroczkin received transit visa no. 520 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 31 July 1940. The register records rabbinical student, aged 25.

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

25

Occupation

Rabbinical Student

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife Chassia (18)--Telshe Yeshiva

The journey

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

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Chassia — wife, aged 18

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.

What is known

Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin and his family, appearing on the Sugihara list, fled the war and escaped to Mandatory Palestine. In Israel he helped found the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah and headed the Chinuch Atzmai. He died in Israel in 1966, survived by five sons who became prominent rabbis.

This is an auction lot page from Bidspirit (Kedem auction house) titled 'Sugihara Visa - Life Saving.' The page indicates the sale of an item related to a Chiune Sugihara life-saving transit visa, but the accessible content does not contain the specific visa details, holder name, or family story.

A Polish citizenship certificate (Zaswiadczenie / Certificat) issued by the Polish Legation in Kowno (Kaunas, Lithuania) to Lejzer Soroczkin, born 1915 in Zdzieciol, Nowogrodek district. The certificate was issued in lieu of a passport to confirm Polish citizenship and enable emigration abroad. It bears stamps including what appear to be Kaunas/Lithuania consular seals.

Rabbi Sorotzkin managed to flee the war and escape to Mandatrory Palestine. SOROCZKIN, Bencjon SOROCZKIN, Boruch SOROCZKIN, Izrael SOROCZKIN, Lejzer

Sugihara-Visa-Life-Saving

Poselstwo Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej w Rownie / Legation de Pologne SOROCZKIN LEJZER Zaswiadczenie / Certificat okazal w tutejszym Urzedzie dowody stwierdzajace, ze jest obywatelem polskim

Where this comes from

• 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 5738, Lejzer Soroczkin, born 1915 at Zdzięcioł, who had come from Zdzięcioł; the year agrees with the register's age and Zdzięcioł agrees with the archive's other records.
• 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 248 of the Kobe community's list of refugees and their relatives abroad: born 1915 at Zdzieciol; relatives abroad: a father, with no name or address given.
• 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 614 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 26, born at Zdzieciol, a yeshiva student, who travelled from Vilnius.
• JDC Shanghai migration file: SOROCZKIN LeJzer
  JDC Archives, New York collection AR3344, 'Complete Shanghai Migration Files' (NY_AR3344_00014), page 136: SOROCZKIN LeJzer, file no. 7601. Match: register No.520 'Lejzer oroczkin' (repaired: Lejzer Soroczkin), and the register independently records this person as reaching Shanghai. Both name parts
• 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 1494); the names closely match this register line — approved by the owner's review, 19 Aug 2026 — the ledger reads: Soroczkin Lejzer, student, born 1915 Zdzieciol, single; 220/11 Kungping Road; Tokyo-issued passport of 2 December 1941. — the ledger reads: Soroczkin Lejzer, student, born 7 May 1915 Zdzieciol; 220/11 Kungping Road; registered 16 December 1941 on a passport issued by the Shanghai consulate itself (S-243, 2 December 1941).
• JDC Archives, New York — Shanghai Migration Files, box index (AR 33/44, file 00014): the alphabetical index to the JDC's Shanghai emigration case files, 1946-1950 — some 2,640 case files covering about 5,400 persons, each family under on…
  JDC Shanghai Migration Files, case file no. 7601 — an emigration case file opened for the family in Shanghai after the war; the file itself can be requested from the JDC Archives
• 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 Feb 1941 (line 520)
• UNRRA China Office, S-1132-0000-0181, registration of Polish rabbis and rabbinical students, their lists and sailings, Shanghai 1945–1946 (UN Archives, AG-018-001)
  UNRRA's China Office registered him in Shanghai in 1946 among the Polish rabbis and rabbinical students; he had arrived in China in September 1941. (United Nations Archives, UNRRA China Office records.)
• UNRRA China Office, S-1132-0000-0181, Mizrachi members list and the United Board of Rabbis' birth-data pages, Shanghai 1945–46 (UN Archives, AG-018-001)
  The United Board of Rabbis and Rabbinical Colleges in Shanghai listed him among its members after the war, born in 1915 in Zdzienciol. His wife Chasa is listed with him, born in 1921 in Klaipeda, and their two sons, born in Shanghai. (United Nations Archives, UNRRA China Office records.)
• Polish rabbis and rabbinical students registered with UNRRA, Shanghai (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, China Office;… — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, list 48676
  The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration's Shanghai register of Polish rabbis and rabbinical students, indexed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, has Lejzer Soroczkin, rabbinical student, arrived in China in Sep 1941, wishing to go to the United States. The name occurs once on the register; the list is of the refugees who came from Vilna by way of Kobe, and an arrival in Shanghai in Sep 1941 is the route this line is recorded as taking.
• List of members of the United Board of Rabbis and Rabbinical Colleges, Shanghai (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database, list 48661)
  Lejzer Soroczkin is named on the list of members of the United Board of Rabbis and Rabbinical Colleges in Shanghai, indexed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This is the only line on the register with this given name and surname; the Board was the body of the Polish rabbis and yeshiva students who reached Shanghai from Kobe in 1941, and their families, the route the register records for this line.
• HaTzofe, 10 April 1942 (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
  Lejzer (Eliezer) Soroczkin, a student of the Telz yeshiva, was in Shanghai in 1942. HaTzofe's list of the yeshiva refugees there, printed on 10 April 1942, names him as the son of Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin of Lutsk, who had already reached the Land of Israel (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
• Chiune Sugihara Facts - The Sugihara Curaçao Visas
• Bidspirit - Israeli online auction portal | participating is free

and 8 further records, shown on the full entry.

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