1925 Belarus Soviet passport
Issued for immigration to British Palestine.
The 19th Century saw an increase of Jewish immigration back to their biblical ancestral homeland in the Middle East, the Land of Israel.
For close to 4,000 years, Jewish presence has been maintained in that part of the world and throughout that time Jews living abroad have always yearned to return to the land of their forefathers, to the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Immigration to Palestine (the Roman occupational term given to the land that was taken from the ancient Israelite’s following the destruction for the Second Temple; the name that continued to be used up to the British occupation at the end of WWI which has no connection to modern time Arab Palestine) was not constant and it varied due to the “Political climate” that existed in the region at the time. In ancient times it was mainly for scholar or religious reasons that saw immigration to Palestine. The 15th Century saw another large wave of Jews; this was mainly after the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, the Spanish Inquisition and expulsion of 1492 and Portugal 6 years later. The 18th & early 19th centuries saw thousands of Hassidic Jews flock to the Holy Land and also after religious persecution at the hands of their Christian neighbors. The 19th century saw the beginning of five major immigration waves know as “Aliyah” from 1882 to 1939:
- 1882-1903 First Aliyah;
- 1904-1914 Second Aliyah;
- 1919-1923 Third Aliyah;
- 1924-1929 Fourth Aliyah;
- 1929-1939 Fifth Aliyah;
1933 to 1948 saw the next and final stages of “Aliyah” or “Illegal Immigration: the British started to implement quotas and restriction to Jews wanting to arrive to the Mandate and with the rise of Hitler to power in 1933, Jews increased their desire to make the promised land their home. As strong and fierce were the British restrictions, which also contributed immensely to the death of the Jews during the Holocaust, the same can be said about their determination to enter and find any way in, thus illegal attempts where made, mainly by sea. The term of HABRICHA (please see a previous article I wrote about the HABRICHA) was given to the illegal and desperate methods the survivors of the Holocaust used in order to achieve this goal after the war. With the termination of the British occupation on May 1948, Jews were finally allowed to fulfill their 2,000 year old dream of entering freely and without condition to their promise land of Israel. Today, Israel stands as a light and beacon of democracy and equality were all races can live freely side by side: Israel has equal rights for women in all religions, for example: Muslims (men and women) serve as high court judges and members of the government, diplomats abroad and more. The same can be said for the other minorities in the country. This is not the case for minorities, such as Christians and Jews, living in neighboring Arab states and even in the Palestinian Authority, where Jews are not permitted to live, women have no true equal rights and has even driven out the majority of the Christians that once dominated Bethlehem.
The passport in this article is an example of a travel document that was used to travel to British Palestine during the period of the Fourth Aliyah.
Apparently, the passport does not seem to have been numbered, this is odd and not something I can say is common. It was issued on July 23rd 1925 to 21-year-old Lara, a young Jewish woman from Minsk. It has the applied rubber stamp of the people’s commissar for Belarus and an unidentified signature of the head of the foreigner’s section in the ministry. The exit visa was issued as well inside by the authorities and the British Mandate visa for Palestine being issued at Moscow (most early Soviet passports have all their British visas being issued at the legation in the capital of the Soviet Union).
Among the rare passports are those that were issued by the Soviet Union during the 1920’s and 1930’s, especially those issued for Jewish immigration to Palestine: The Communist authorities did not see kindly to the Zionist movement which they deemed as “counter revolutionary”.
I have added images of this rare Soviet passport.
Thank you for reading “Our Passports”.
