Mandate passport from Prague

Used to escape occupied Prague.

 

March 15^th 1939 was another nail in the coffin for pre-war Europe. This was another event, warning bells ringing, indicating that the clouds of war were imminent.

 

Nazi Germany has been walking down a path that could only mean one thing. That war was close and the relatively safety that Europe was enjoying for the past 20 years after the end of the First World War were coming to an end. People could feel this deep down in their bones.

 

One such individual was a woman named Bedriska Schindelman aged 25 from Bratislava, originally, and now a resident of the Mandate, from Giv’at Haim. Apparently, judging by her British passport, she was visiting or living temporarily back in her home town, Pressburg in German.

 

The passport here is remarkable for several reasons, one, for starters, for being a British consular MANDATE example issued moments before the German takeover of the country, what was before march 15^th Czechoslovakia.

 

The document here was issued to Bedriska soon after she realized the state she was in – it was a rush against time, to arrange her formal and personal affairs and obtain a new travel document, not local, that would allow her to get out and offer her some sort of protection, being a British citizen as well. She walked into the British consular offices in Prague and requested the issuance of an updated new travel document. She wanted to return back to Giv’at Haim, her home for the last few years.

 

British Palestine passport No. 72 was issued on March 9^th 1939. Her first visas were all transit visas that would enable her to complete her journey safely out. Here are some of the diplomats that signed several of her visas inside:

 

1. Italian diplomat Guide Zecchin, posted to Prague on December 21^st1936 to March 22^nd 1940, being transferred to Damascus in the Middle East (p.8);

 

2. Josef Rheinberger, formally Austrian diplomat in Yugoslavia who changed-sides after the Anschluss of 1938, working later on for the German Foreign Ministry at Zagreb (p.10);

 

3. German diplomat Willi Przybill (1896-1976) posted to Bratislava (Pressburg) on p.23;

 

4. Israeli diplomat Moshe Krone posted to New York (p.28);

 

An important visa worth mentioning was issued in Prague by the “German Foreign Ministry representative to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia“, seen on page 13, but to date could not identify the signature and it is not recognizable either by archivist abroad, yet, as mentioned.

 

We can locate several other visas inside her passport, taking her to Switzerland and France as well.

 

Most important to know is that her escape journey ended on September 14^th, her return and entry back to the Mandate, 2 weeks after war erupted.

 

 

Have added images of this interesting travel document.

 

 

 

Thank you for reading “Our Passports”.