Gdala Czertok

Gdala Czertok received transit visa no. 868 at the Japanese consulate in Kaunas on 2 August 1940. The register records clerk, aged 47.

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What the register records

Nationality as recorded

Polnisch

Age in 1940

47

Occupation

Clerk

Family, per the Kitade-Bluman list

wife Ida (42), son Dawid (18)

The journey

Reached Japan; reached Shanghai; registered in Kobe for South America.

Travelled with, and never given a number

• Ida — wife, aged 42
• Dawid — son, 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.

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 104 of the Kobe Jewish Community's refugee register: aged 47, born at Warsaw, a clerk, who arrived in Japan from Vilnius on 14 February 1941.
• 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 14 Feb 1941 (line 868)
• Photograph of Gdalya and Ida Czertok, supplied to the archive from a family collection.
  Photograph of GDALYA AND IDA CZERTOK outside the family bakery 'Amerika' in Lida, late 1930s — given to the archive by Anthony Rabin, 26 August 2026, whose grandfather Rabinowitz was Gdalya's first cousin. Identification and caption are the donor's; the archive publishes it with his permission and credit. Register No. 868 reads 'Czertok Gdala', Polish, visa 2 August 1940; No. 869 is Hirsz Czertok, same date.
• Anthony Rabin, correspondence with the archive, 26 August 2026 — the CZERTOK BROTHERS of LIDA, from the family (Gdalya was the grandfather's first cousin of the writer's Rabinowitz line). GDALYA CZERTOK (regist… — these two families only.
  THE FAMILY'S ACCOUNT (Anthony Rabin, 26 Aug 2026), and how it agrees with the archive's own record. He identifies No. 868 GDALYA and No. 869 HIRSZ (Hershel) as BROTHERS, co-owners of the Drutindustria iron works at Lida. Against this line the consular list already recorded 'wife Ida (42), son Dawid (18)' and a next destination of SOUTH AMERICA — and the family says Gdalya and David emigrated to RIO DE JANEIRO in 1949, which is the same journey named twice, eighty-five years apart, by a clerk and by a descendant. Ida was a BUDIN; her family kept the cafe Ameryka on Suwalska Street, the bakery outside which the two of them stand in the photograph on this page. Their elder son LEON was in England in 1939, joined the 1st Armoured Brigade of the Polish army and was killed on the river Maas on 30 December 1944 — which is why only David travelled. The family believes Ida died during the war; the archive states no fate of its own, and records this as theirs.
• GDALYA CZERTOK'S DEATH CERTIFICATE, 1967, from FamilySearch — supplied by Anthony Rabin, 26 August 2026. It places him at SAO PAULO, Brazil, at his death in 1967. He and his son David had entered Brazil at Rio de Janeiro in 1949 (their i…
  GDALYA CZERTOK'S DEATH CERTIFICATE, 1967, from FamilySearch — supplied by Anthony Rabin, 26 August 2026. It places him at SAO PAULO, Brazil, at his death in 1967. He and his son David had entered Brazil at Rio de Janeiro in 1949 (their immigration cards seen by the family on FamilySearch); by 1967 he was living in Sao Paulo. This closes the journey the register opened: register No. 868, a Sugihara transit visa issued at Kaunas on 2 August 1940, the Kobe refugee list's 'next destination South America', and at the far end a Brazilian death certificate twenty-seven years later.
• LEON CZERTOK'S GRAVE — photographed by Anthony Rabin, who has stood at it, and given to this archive 26 August… — that is, by the father and brother who had reached Rio de Janeiro. Anthony Rabin has also written a short biography of him.
  LEON CZERTOK'S GRAVE — photographed by Anthony Rabin, who has stood at it, and given to this archive 26 August 2026. Leon was the elder son of GDALYA CZERTOK (register No. 868) and Ida nee Budin of Lida. He was in England in 1939, joined the 1st Armoured Brigade of the Polish army, fought across Europe and was killed on the river MAAS in Holland on 30 DECEMBER 1944 — the one member of this family the war did not spare, while his parents and brother were in Shanghai. He lies in the JEWISH CEMETERY IN THE FOREST OF VRACHELSE HEIDE, outside OOSTERHOUT, North Brabant, which is maintained by the Breda synagogue. The headstone in the photograph replaces the original wooden marker and was PAID FOR BY THE BRAZILIAN FAMILY — that is, by the father and brother who had reached Rio de Janeiro. Anthony Rabin has also written a short biography of him.
• United States National Archives, RG 84, Classified Visa Files 1946-51, U.S. Consulate General Shanghai — the file unit “CURACAO VISAS” (NAID 12017241), declassified 2014, parts formerly SECRET. A 1949 investigation by the American consul…
  An office memorandum of 16 February 1949, the second page of the consulate's review of Curacao visas, lists as one item 'D. Czertok and G. Czertok and Mrs. I. Czertok', notes that their Curacao visas were issued on 5 December 1948, and adds: 'As yet no information is available concerning these persons.' A later page in the same file repeats 'D. Czertok and family. Nothing known.' No allegation of any kind is made against them. The initials are worth setting beside the register, which gives No. 868 as Gdala Czertok, 47, a clerk, with a wife Ida, 42, and a son Dawid, 18, and records that the family reached Shanghai: three initials against three named people in the right city, G for Gdala, D for Dawid, Mrs I for Ida. Matched on initials and a household alone - no age, birthplace or full given name in the memorandum confirms it is the same family, and it is recorded here as a lead and not as an identification.
• Photograph of Gdalya and Ida Czertok, supplied to the archive from a family collection.
• GDALYA CZERTOK'S DEATH CERTIFICATE, 1967, from FamilySearch — supplied by Anthony Rabin, 26 August 2026. It places him at SAO PAULO, Brazil, at his death in 1967. He and his son David had entered Brazil at Rio de Janeiro in 1949 (their i…
• LEON CZERTOK'S GRAVE — photographed by Anthony Rabin, who has stood at it, and given to this archive 26 August… — that is, by the father and brother who had reached Rio de Janeiro. Anthony Rabin has also written a short biography of him.

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