J stamped German passport
Wien issue with refugee ID.
Much has been written and said about the infamous German passports specially issued for Jews, marked with a large J at the top-left corner of the first page that came out following a Swiss request from October 5th. The issuing of such passports lasted until the second half of 1941, October, when the German authorities stopped issuing Jews with passports as a means of encouraging and enforcing immigration. Towards the end of that year the decision to annihilate Europe’s Jews was taken.
Besides adding the large J at the top of each title page to a passport that was issued to a Jew, the addition of the name Israel was added to a male and Sara to a female. This began to appear around January of 1939. All these means were done in order to enable other countries to recognize when a Jews was trying to enter the country or apply for a visa at a consulate.
The passport here is rather interesting, not only because of it being a J stamped German passport, because it was validated at the beginning of the war abroad and it comes with a rare alien’s ID booklet with the indication inside of being a victim of Nazi persecution.
German passport No. 64941 was issued to young Egon Pilzer aged 23from Wien, on December 29th, 1938. The passport is extended by the Swiss legation in the UK, who was also acting on behalf of the German government at the early stages of the war (neutral countries during the war and in the last Great War of 1914-18 also represented the interests of the waring sides, such at Sweden, Brazil etc.). This addition inside this passport here surely adds to its appeal (an important note: most Wien issued passports do not have German exit visas that were required and can be located inside other passports issued from Germany proper, this can be explained by the stamps and signatures on page 7 “Devisenstelle” which indicated that heavy taxes have been “applied accordingly” by the German offices, therefore no exit visa was required for the German border control when leaving. After the Nazi’s have “milked” all property and belongings from the Jewish victims, they were exempt from other formalities, ready for departing abroad).
Inside the passport we can locate the right visas for entering the UK, issued on April 28th the following year. The visa was issued by PCO captain V.C. Farrell, who later moved to Prague and moved out due to the outbreak of war (during the war he was located at Bern, neutral Switzerland, I have attached a sample of a visa he issued at that location as well). The British visa is followed the next day by transit Belgium visa No. 4078 which was used on May 3rd when arriving at the airport at Harem, after departing the German airport of Frankfurt the same day. Young Egon reached Dover 2 days later.
On the 9th a British Aliens certificate of registration was issued to him, numbered 731435. Inside on page 4 we can locate the special applied adhesive label indicating he is a “Refugee from Nazi Persecution“, which prevented him from being locked up and interned in an enemy civilian internment camp later (many unlucky individuals were interned on the Isle of Man, at the Onchan or Hutchinson internment camps for the duration of the war or part of it).
I have added images of this fascinating set of documents.
Thank you for reading “Our Passports”.
