Not only is a visa of the Republic of Mali in a GDR passport most unusual, but the passport holder – Eva Brück, née Morgenstern, escaped from the Nazis. She was born in Berlin on 13 Jun 1926. East German Passport Mali

Parents

Eva Morgenstern’s father, Milan Morgenstern, was an Austrian educational therapist and psychiatrist. During the 1920s, he served as the head of a counseling center for juvenile delinquents under the International Workers’ Aid (IAH) in Berlin. Her mother, Sophie Alice Hirschberg, worked as a special education teacher for disabled children. In 1933, following the rise of the National Socialists to power, the family fled to Vienna. Eva attended primary school there and later enrolled at the Schwarzwaldschule in 1936.

Escape East German Passport Mali

After the annexation of Austria in 1938, the family escaped to the United Kingdom. Sadly, Eva’s paternal grandmother and an aunt fell victim to the Holocaust in the Theresienstadt ghetto. Eva herself attended a Quaker boarding school and a high school in Oxford. She pursued her studies in modern languages at St. Anne’s College from 1944 to 1947 and subsequently worked as a teacher.

Kindertransport

In 1947, she wed Josef Brück, who had been rescued from Vienna in 1939 through a Kindertransport. Together with him, a Jewish resident of Lemberg (now Lviv) who was regarded by the British as a Soviet citizen, she had intentions of traveling to the Soviet Union in 1949. East German Passport Mali

However, they were detained in East Berlin and, out of political conviction, chose to remain there. In 1958, she became a citizen of East Germany (DDR). Eva Morgenstern worked for the English edition of the trade union newspaper “Teachers of the World” and contributed to various newspapers and magazines in the DDR. Her proficiency in Russian also led her to work as a simultaneous interpreter, notably in 1952 when she interpreted for Ilya Ehrenburg at the World Peace Congress in Vienna.

The Passport East German Passport Mali

She translated educational texts from Russian, museum catalogs, and even a few comics by Hannes Hegen into English. Her overseas travels took her to Scandinavia, Mongolia, North America, Asia, Africa, and also back to Austria. During these journeys, she often found herself in disputes with the SED party bureaucracy over travel permits.

She penned travelogues and short stories, though only a fraction of them were approved for publication; the rest circulated in the DDR as samizdat literature. Her international interviews appeared in the magazine “Bildende Kunst.” In addition to her professional endeavors, Brück also devoted her time to volunteering within the Jewish community of Berlin.

She died in Berlin at age 72 in 1998.

 

 

 

 

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