Rare pre-Anschluss stateless passport

Austrian travel document used for British Palestine.

 

Austria was under German occupation from March 1938 to April 1945, and much has been written about this in earlier publications and articles as well.

 

The document here is an interesting travel document because in my years of collecting World War Two related material I have not seen many examples to the one that appears in today’s article. But, as being a collector of war related memorabilia and Holocaust material as well, I believe that this item here is important enough to share here with my fellow readers (it also appeared in the past on previous on-line sources).

 

Austrian stateless-passport no. 010.673 was issued to a Jewish couple originating from Romania, David from Comănești and Berta from Volochysk (Wołoczyska), east of one of Poland’s largest cities Ternopol, nowadays in Ukraine. The Hauser’s were issued the passport at Wien on March 17^th 1936, two years before the infamous German takeover of the country. The date being rather close to this important historical event that would be connected to WW2 merits its discussion here and linking it to the war and the Holocaust that would follow, this being my own personal opinion on the matter.

 

The document was issued the required visa for reaching British Palestine, Italian transit visa for boarding a boat from Trieste (after transiting via Yugoslavia). The couples reached Haifa port on May 20th, and were very lucky this way to avoid a certain death that would have awaited them had they stayed in Austria.

 

 

Thank you for reading “Our Passports”.