WW2 Czech service passport
Consular issue for a Jewish officer in London.
Official issued travel documents are among the key items that interest me and are a key focus of my collection and archived materials that I have managed to locate during the last years. So, when I was sent these images, I was thrilled to analyze them and then started the long journey of gathering information in order to understand much better the reason it was issued and also the individual it was issued to during the war.
Diplomacy was maintained, in many cases, during the war and the rights that official passports gave their holders were kept and not hindered in most of the cases they were issued and used. Such documents enabled safe passage and movement in neutral countries and in Axis/Allied controlled zones, and when war broke out in 1939 some arrests were made, for example Polish attaché Zbigniew Szubert (see image) in Berlin was arrested, later released and taken to Denmark, but we can presume that not all were as fortunate. During the eruption of hostilities between Berlin and Moscow in 1941 (Operation Barbarossa) though the Soviet ambassador Vladimir Dekanozov was permitted safe passage back home by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, both sides arrested the diplomatic staff at their respective embassies but at the end an exchange was done via neutral Turkey (when Germany invaded Yugoslavia earlier in 1941, the Gestapo arrested the diplomats at the various consulates scattered in the Reich, for example, Yugoslavian consul-general Dr.Misetic at Graz was arrested and the same was the fate of consul-general Radnoje Sumenkovic arrested in Prague who was released at the end of the war in 1945 – see images attached).
The document in this article is rather unique and a fascinating example where diplomacy was enforced though the country of its holder was under Axis occupation and not recognized by all warring sides. It’s a regular passport which was given to an army officer and gave its user official protection. Let me explain. In some cases, not all diplomats or government officials were given Diplomatic or Service passports, but were issued regular travel documents with all the diplomatic courtesy and protection to its users (though countries did not have to do so, it was the custom) – I added an example of a British passport issued to an officer at Cairo, though regular, it gave its holder official status and protection.
The article here will focus on a Czechoslovakian passport issued at London by the government in exile to an army captain, Jewish, for travelling officially to the USSR in the last year of the war.
Passport number 214637 was issued at London on August 10th 1944 to army captain Oskar Strompf aged 47 from Vyšný Kubín (now northern Slovakia).
His military career was rich already by this time:
- 1915-18 fought in WWI, captured in battles against the Imperial Russian army in 1916;
- 1919 volunteer fighting against Hungarians in the region of Slovakia;
- 1919 assisted in securing order in the region of Slovakia, Czechoslovakian army;
Apparently, Oskar fled his native country just before the German take over on March 12th 1939, he reached British Palestine as a refugee on July 3rd illegally, arriving in Haifa. He was mobilized into arms at British camp of Sarafand in November the same year and left Beirut via boat for Marseilles in southern France, to join the allied army being formed, and was briefly allocated to the region of Agde. The following year on July 7th he arrived at Plymouth, England. From the end of this year until 1945 he was serving in the Czechoslovakian army abroad based in the UK. During this period of time he undertook various military courses under British military supervision and instruction. Towards the end of the war in April of 1945 he was sent as battalion commander in the city of Levoča. His army services came to an end completely in 1949.
The interesting section of the passport here is the service visa issued to him by the Soviet consular section in London on December 23rd of 1944, followed by an Iranian Service visa as well from 3 days later, and an Iraqi and Egyptian visa too. All issued for official travel and transit for the main destination of the USSR. But as we examine the markings inside the passport and the final arrival destination we can learn that he flew most likely by military plane through Baku in Azerbaijan (there is a stamp for the city dating from February 27th 1945). The most significant annotation inside the passport is the extension of his original visa from December 1944 by occupying Soviet representative of the NKVD on February 22nd 1945 in northern Iran, the oil port city of Bandar-e Pahlavi, now Bandar-e Anzali (the Soviets and the British invaded Iran during the war as a preemptive action to make sure Iran and its oil fields do not fall into the hands of the Axis, and though all sides made sure they would leave the country when the time came, 6 months after the end of the fighting, Moscow violated her commitment in doing so in 1945 and strengthened her grip on the country. It was only in 1946 that the Red Army and its NKVD units left northern Iran, in what be known later on as the Iran crisis of 1946, and one of the earliest crises of the Cold War era).
The following pages are post war extensions and other visas permitting short visits to the UK and France in 1946.
Have added images of this “Service passport” issued and used during the war.
Smaller image source: Wikipedia.
Thank you for reading “Our Passports”.
