Important short-lived WWII related visa
1939 visa issued at the city of Vilnius....
1934 Soviet passport
Issued for immigration to British Palestine. 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". ...
1936 Bulgarian service passport
Two interesting visas issued inside. Another passport that surfaced recently, and at first glance seemed to be a simple and innocent looking sample, concealed inside at the end valuable information when it comes to visas and their usage inside a passport. These subtle and little crumbs that are laced inside each document, at times, can lead to a surprising find and enrich our understanding not only of the document, but to profound events in history, and in this case to the i...
The Spiegel family saga
Internment at Mauritius Island during the war. This is the story of a Jewish family that was caught in Austria of 1938, following Hitler's ...
British Mandate internment camps permit
WW2 civilian internment camp. Even though the items in this article cannot be classified as travel documents, they are important and interesting enough to add images of them and explore the story behind them. During the war, each side, be it allied or axis, established c...
Straits Settlements
An exceptionally rare colonial passport from 1940....
Returning back to Harbin
French passport used for Manchuria. The Japanese occupation of North-Eastern China (1931 to 1945), a territory know in the mainland as Dong Bei (东北), has always interested me ...
A cosmetician’s travels around the world
1938 passport used for Shanghai. Polish passport number 136/4/38 issued at Chicago...
Why collect old passports? And what can we learn from them?
Have been interested in old travel documents and passports for over 20 years and have been focused on collecting items stemming from the era of World War Two and the H...
German national status in China after WW2
German Affairs Commission in Shanghai. The German's status situation in China after World War Two was not a simple clean cut case. During the final and decisive year of 1945, there are two periods of time that effected the status of the German nationals, followed by the Austrians, living in China. Those living under Japanese controlled and those in ‘liberated’ Chinese areas: the former were treated as allies and spared incarceration (excepting those of Jewish origin who were placed inside the “Shanghai Ghetto” in the...