Outbreak of war
Outbreak of war
1939 special short-lived movement Ausweis.
Though this is not an actual passport or travel document, it could fall under the category of movement permits and passes, thus into the family of travel papers and material used for crossing into different zones or entering border checkpoints, and therefore, at the end, be a travel-document of some sort, well, maybe.
The location where this German ID was issued at is located in a long-disputed piece of land that was placed right at the center of the two countries and for many years was the source of friction and political unrest. I have written about this area in previous articles, you may learn more about it in this link here.
German document No. 31602 was issued on September 21st 1939 (the pre-fixed month would suggest it was issued possibly for the use right after the outbreak of war earlier in the month). The Ausweis was issued for crossing between the two Silesian territories that up to 3 weeks earlier were controlled by both Germany and Poland, thus having different border crossing zone and was the actual borer between the 2 countries (each one would also issue special border-crossing documents for those wishing to move strictly ONLY between the two areas, something similar to a “border-crossing-ID”).
After the war stabilized and the territory east of the former border was annexed officially into the Great Reich, no need was later on for such “trivial” special crossing ID’s…
Thank you for reading “Our Passports”.
