Benedykt Birsztejn

Benedykt Birsztejn received transit visa no. 632 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 1 August 1940. The register records engineer, aged 38.

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

38

Occupation

Engineer

The journey

Reached Japan; aided by the Polish ambassador Tadeusz Romer; registered in Kobe for Canada.

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 440, Bendykt Birsztejn, born 1901 at Warszawa, who came from Warszawa; the year agrees with the register's compiled age.
• 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 1 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: listed among Polish subjects, aged 39, born at Warsaw, an engineer, who arrived in Japan from Vilnius on 5 December 1940.
• US arrival manifest: Benedykt Birsztejn, Seattle, 1941
  "Seattle Passenger Lists", FamilySearch, entry for Benedykt Birsztejn, 1941. Ship: Heian Maru. Matched from the Heian Maru's Polish-born passenger list (198 people, of whom 57 matched the register). Register No.632 'Benedyki Birsztejn' records age 38; the manifest gives born 1902, arriving 19
• M/S Heian Maru manifest, sheet 21 — List or Manifest of Alien Passengers, sailed Yokohama 27 May 1941, arrived Seattle 7 June 1941, all thirty admitted (NARA M1383, roll 262, Seattle Passenger Lists; retrieved with the owner signed in).…
  M/S Heian Maru, Yokohama 27 May - Seattle 7 June 1941; line 2: 39, engineer, b. Warsaw, last residence Lisbon, Portugal
• "Washington, King, Seattle, Passenger Lists, 1890-1957", FamilySearch — index entry for Benedykt Birsztejn, 1941: born about 1902, Poland. Digitised from NARA microfilm publication M1383 (passenger and crew lists of vessels arriving at S…
  FamilySearch's index of the Seattle passenger lists, read by the archive on 20 September 2026, has Benedykt Birsztejn, born about 1902 in Poland, arriving at Seattle in 1941. The register's compiled line gives 1902, and the two agree. The name occurs once on the register, and a Polish-born passenger landing at Seattle in 1941 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.
• 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… — "List of refugees who left Japan to places other than Shanghai in the month of May 1941", Nos. 1–321
  He left Yokohama on the Heian Maru on 27 May 1941, bound for Canada (the Jewish Community of Kobe's list of departures, May 1941 (JDC Archives, AR 33/44 file 53)). The list reads: "Birsztein Benedykt". (Heian Maru, Yokohama, 27 May 1941.)
• The Heian Maru, arriving at Seattle in 1941: list or manifest of alien passengers, the sheet that names Emanuel Distler — US National Archives, Record Group 85 (Immigration and Naturalization Service), Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels…
• The Heian Maru, arriving at Seattle in 1941: the continuation sheet, with the relatives named and the destinations, for the sheet that names Norbert Henryk Gorwic — US National Archives, Record Group 85 (Immigration and Naturalization Se…

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