1940 war-time Polish service passport
Issued in Athens and used before the fall.
Here we can locate an interesting document that was issued and used in Greece before the collapse and full Axis occupation of 1941. What is surprisingly interesting the additional document that came with it, made out for it’s holder, same time the travel document was was prepared.
Before we continue with the documents in this article, some advanced explanation is required to the events that led to it being issued in 1940, which fall under the Balkans campaign of WWII.
The above-mentioned campaigns relate to the Axis actions and aggression taken by them in 1940, such as the fighting in Greece, Albania and that led also to the occupation of Yugoslavia the following year.
Fascist Italy invaded Allied Greece on October 28th, it what is known as the Greco-Italian War, after an ultimatum presented by Benito Mussolini to Greek PM Ioannis Metaxas, regarding the cessation of Greek territory, which was rejected. Thus, Fascist Italian troops attached from Albania with a strength of 140,000, and by November, the brave Greeks managed to put a halt to the Italian invasion and in January 1941 the managed to push them back into Albania. Hitler, fearing a British intervention that could danger the rear, decided not to allow the situation to deteriorate further and assisted his ally by sending troops to neighboring Bulgaria & Romania, attacking from the east. On April 6th 1941 Germany invaded both Yugoslavia and Greece in what be known as the Battle of Greece, or in German Unternehmen Marita: by the 27th reached the capital Athens and on June 1st it was all over, including the invasion and capture of the Island of Crete as well (added an image of photograph of Jewish British Palestinian soldiers that were captured and spent time in a POW camp in Germany and sent home via mail).
The passport:
Polish consular service passport No. 1051/5/40 was issued to Irene Przykorski, who was employed official in the embassy, on June 1st, 1940 by Polish diplomat Wladyslaw Günther-Schwarzburg (April 10th, 1885 – March 27th, 1974, London). He had a rich diplomatic carrier, being posted to Greece in 1935, a post held until April 22nd 1941, then being transferred to the Polish Government-in-Exile at London, acting in various diplomatic missions).
The passport has several pre-arranged exit visas, most likely prepared for the event of needed evacuation. We can locate inside British, French, Turkish & Egyptian visas. The passport was extended again on April 11th, 1941, by then already the situation was clear and diplomatic missions in the capital of Athens, and other cities in Greece, were taking precautions to evacuate their staff from anticipated harms way. Irene here made an evacuation on the 17th to British Palestine via Egypt.
The additional letter from the consulate is a fascinating document on its own: she is credited for assisting in the evacuation of Polish troops the previous year to reach allied shores safely, the document came together with her service passport.
Thank you for reading “Our Passports”.
