Rachil Cyrelson

Rachil Cyrelson received transit visa no. 629 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 1 August 1940. Aged 60 in 1940.

What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

60

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

grandson Morduch (7)

The journey

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

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Morduch — son, aged 7

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 11 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: listed among Lithuanian subjects, aged 62, born at Mogileff.
• JDC Archives, New York, collection AR 33/44 file 53 (the Jewish Community of Kobe's returns to the JDC, 1941; Set I, item 00761) — Set I pp. 24–32 — April 1941 (and a May continuation sheet)
  She left Kobe on the Yawata Maru on 8 April 1941, bound for the USA (the Jewish Community of Kobe's list of refugees who left Japan in April 1941 (JDC Archives, AR 33/44 file 53)). The list reads: "[surname overtyped; ends -lson] Rachila, ″ Slobin — Polish — Kobe — U.S.A. (Yawata Maru, 8 April)". (Yawata Maru, Kobe, 8 April 1941, the USA.)
• United States, Census, 1950 — FamilySearch, index entries read 24 October 2026
  FamilySearch's index of the 1950 census, read on 24 October 2026, has Rachel Cyrelson, a widow aged 70 and born in Russia or Poland, a finisher in the manufacture of ladies' suits, at the head of a household in Brooklyn on 4 April 1950, a citizen. The surname occurs once on the register, the given name and the birth year of about 1880 agree with the register, and she left Kobe for the USA in April 1941, so the entry is taken as this woman.
• Vermont, Franklin, St. Albans, Canadian Border Crossings, 1895-1954 — FamilySearch, index entries read 24 October 2026
  FamilySearch's index of the St. Albans border crossings, read on 24 October 2026, has a Rachil Cyrelson, aged 61, and in the same volume a Cyrelson boy aged 8. The register has Rachil Cyrelson, aged 60 in 1940, with a grandson of seven. The surname occurs once on the register and the spelling of the given name, her age and the grandson agree, so the entry is taken as this woman. The index gives the date only as a range, 1924 to 1952.
• United States, Social Security Numerical Identification Files (NUMIDENT), 1936-2007 — FamilySearch, index entries read 24 October 2026
  FamilySearch's index of the Social Security applications (NUMIDENT), read on 24 October 2026, has Rachel Cyrelson, born 20 December 1879 in the Soviet Union, with a claim filed on 25 May 1951. The surname occurs once on the register, and the birth year and the birthplace in Russia agree with the register and the Kobe register's Mogilev, so the entry is taken as this woman.

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