Another NKVD related travel document
Being a Polish temporary internal passport from Samarkand.
A massive influx of refugees fled from former eastern Poland into the Soviet Union in 1941, following the German invasion notoriously known as Operation Barbarossa. But already before the invasion, thousands of Poles were forced out of their villages, towns, and cities and deported east, out of occupied Poland (now annexed to the USSR) and those caught as well in the former Baltic States, those who did not manage to escape. Overall 1.7 million Poles were arrested at the beginning of the war. Majority transferred to Siberia and Kazakhstan, placed in Gulag camps, other facilities, deep inside the country. Their position was unclear and seen as enemy of the state. This changed after June of 1941.
The Soviet Union and Poland signed the Sikorski–Mayski agreement on July 30th 1941, after negotiations where conducted between the Soviet Ambassador to the UK, Ivan Mayski and Sikorski. The Soviets where in desperate need for help from other countries opposing Nazi Germany, and this led to the re-establishment of Diplomatic ties between the two, culminating into the singing of the Sikorski–Mayski agreement. Following these events, thousands of civilians and former POW’s were set free from captivity. Such a release led to the re-issuing of new travel documents and passports to those who were now trying to find a way to leave. The issuing of passports where done at the newly established Polish “consulates”, or branch offices, over 20 of them (these where shut down after July 20th of 1942 when the Soviet authorities cancelled their permission to running them), and the type of document can be categorized into mainly 2 types: official passport used to travel outside of the country and a “temporary” passport meant to be used ONLY internally, most likely to enable the holder to reach the border and from there, with other set of papers, to cross over (this was mainly the case with those who managed to be evacuated to neighboring Persia in 1942).
One such lucky Polish citizen was a Jewish elderly man named Abraham Leib Wasserberger, aged 46, who originally came from Krakow and by then fully under German occupation. The document here was NOT a regular issued blue-covered passport but a one sheet travel document that was issued under supervision of the Soviet infamous NKVD security apparatus.
The document was issued far away from his beloved country, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. As mentioned earlier, Abraham, aged 46 was deported, most likely in 1940 or 1941 to a remote part of the Soviet Union and this move saved his life, and possibly, we hope other members of his family as well. Passport number 657/42 (with sheet numbered 63158) was issued on March 30th of 1942 by the Polish delegate, magistrate, K. Kasimierczak. The back of the document has annotations made by anther Polish official at the embassy named Zaufania. Seems some assistance was given out to him before his departure to the Iranian border, such as basic substances, we can see such markings made at the back as well.
He managed to get evacuated to Tehran at the end and I make this assumption because this document was located at the end in Israel: many of those refugees who arrived in Persia of 1942 opted to reach British Palestine the same year or the next. The British Consular officials in Tehran issued GRATIS visas for the Mandate; we can locate such visas at the newly issued Polish passports from the time also issued by the Polish consul in the capital (a better understanding of Polish refugee camps during the war can be read via this link).
Evading the horrors of war and fleeing was not an easy task at all. We learn from the various travel documents that we find that the routes that individuals took at times surpass our wildest imaginations. Today, we at times cannot believe what they went through in order to survive. But the will to live and do so freely is stronger than any cage or prison erected.
Thank you for reading “Our Passports”.
