Symcha Elberg

Symcha Elberg received transit visa no. 555 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 31 July 1940. The register records rabbinical student - mir yeshiva, aged 30.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

30

Occupation

Rabbinical Student - Mir Yeshiva

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife Miriam (19)

The journey

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

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Miriam — 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 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 122 (also numbered 138) of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 32, born at Radzymin, a rabbi, who arrived in Japan from Kaunas on 2 February 1941.
• 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 1229); the names closely match this register line — approved by the owner's review, 19 Aug 2026
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database — 'List of Polish war refugees in China', 242 names: the Polish (Sugihara-stream) group in wartime Shanghai, among them Gedalia Zupnik of the Mir, Chaim Ba…
  USHMM 'List of Polish war refugees in China' (242 names); the names closely match this register line — approved by the owner's review, 19 Aug 2026
• 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 2 Feb 1941 (line 555)
• "California, San Francisco, Passenger Lists, 1893-1953", FamilySearch — index entry for Symcha Elberg, 1947: born about 1910, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1410 (passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Francisco).…
  FamilySearch's index of the San Francisco passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Symcha Elberg, born about 1910 in Poland, arriving at San Francisco in 1947 on the General M. C. Meigs. The register's compiled line gives 1910, and the two are 0 years apart, and the name occurs once on the register. The ship's manifest heading says she sailed from Shanghai, and a passenger born in Poland landing at San Francisco in 1947 from Shanghai is the route's end: the refugees who waited out the war there. So the entry is taken as this person's under the archive's rule of 19 September 2026 for records from the route. The sheet is NARA microfilm publication M1410, film 387, image 726, read by the archive on 20 September 2026.
• 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; the list gives his year of birth as 1919 (other records give 1910) and his birthplace as Radzymin. His wife Mirjam is listed with him, born in 1921 in Harbin. (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 Symcha Elberg, rabbinical student, arrived in China in Aug 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 Aug 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)
  Symcha Elberg 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. The name occurs once on the register; 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.
• La-karov ve-la-rachok, 28 March 1946 — the Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press)
  The Far Eastern Palestine Committee's list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai, printed by the Jewish Agency Search Bureau's bulletin La-karov ve-la-rachok on 28 March 1946, lists Symcha Elberg: born 1909 at Radzymin, a journalist, arrived in 1941 from Kaunas by way of Siberia; the year and the town agree with the Kobe Jewish community's refugee register (National Library of Israel, Historical Jewish Press).
• 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 Symcha Elberg, aged 29, of Warsaw, who was in Wilno during the war. The archive attaches it under its rule of 19 September 2026: the card file is a record of the refugees in Wilno, where the road through Sugihara's visas began; the full name occurs once on the register; and the card places the person in Wilno in 1939–41, on the road to Sugihara's visas. Credit: Yad Vashem Archives.

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