Benjamin Belnish Gelbfisz

Benjamin Belnish Gelbfisz received transit visa no. 589 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 31 July 1940. The register records rabbinical student - lublin yeshiva, aged 19.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

19

Occupation

Rabbinical Student - Lublin Yeshiva

The journey

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

Where this comes from

• 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 24 Jan 1941 (line 589)
• 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 1388) — found on reading the ledger page itself — the ledger reads: Gelbfisz Bejnisz (the register's 'Benjamin Beinish Gelbfisz'), student, born 3 May 1921 Siedlce; 35 Moulmein Road; registered 13 December 1941 on a passport issued by the Shanghai consulate itself (G-118, 4 December 1941) — found on reading the page.
• Oral history interview with Benjamin Gelbfish — USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, interview 45605. Catalogue: born Aug 7 1921, Siedlce (Lublin, Poland); born Siedlce 7 Aug 1921; Bluman: No.589 B… — the interviewee may be living
  USC Shoah Foundation VHA interview 45605: Benjamin Gelbfish — the interviewee himself — gave a testimony (catalogue: born Aug 7 1921, Siedlce (Lublin, Poland)); born Siedlce 7 Aug 1921; Bluman: No.589 Benjamin Gelbfisz, 19, Lublin yeshiva student; the Shanghai ledger (entry 1388) has him born 3 May 1921 Siedlce — the same man, a date conflict of three months
• Oral history interview with Benjamin Gelbfish — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, oral history interviews of the Flight and Rescue collection, RG-50.494.0008, recorded 1999. Linked; the Museum's still from the interview is shown o…
  He recorded an oral history for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Flight and Rescue project in 1999, as Benjamin Gelbfish. He says in it that when the war broke out he was at the Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, which is the yeshiva the compiled list gives for this line. The interview is linked here and its still is on the Testimonies page.
• 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 1921 in Siedlec. (United Nations Archives, UNRRA China Office records.)
• Jon Kalish, "The Shoah through Orthodox eyes", JTA / The New York Jewish Week, 10 April 2018
  After the war Benjamin Gelbfish made his living as a watchmaker and jewellery manufacturer. He died in 2008. In 2018 his family lent the Amud Aish Memorial Museum in Brooklyn the papers he had kept from the journey — among them an unused meal ticket from a Vilna soup kitchen of 1939 and his Trans-Siberian railway ticket booklet — as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on 10 April 2018. The papers the museum holds — a Vilna soup-kitchen ticket of 1939 and the Trans-Siberian booklet — are the route of this register line, a Lublin yeshiva student of 19 in 1940, and the name occurs once on the register.
• 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 Benjamin B Gelbfisz, rabbinical student, arrived in China in 15 Nov 1941, wishing to go to Canada. 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 15 Nov 1941 is the route this line is recorded as taking.
• 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 Beniamin Gelbfisz, aged 19, of Siedlce, who was in Wilno during the war; his age and his town agree with this register line. Credit: Yad Vashem Archives.
• 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 1634, Benjamin Gelbfisz, born in 1921 at Siedlce, who came from Lublin.

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