German Nazi Alien Passport With Stamp EVACUATED

Earlier this year I received an inquiry from a reader asking me about the document of his grandmother. The passport is quite interesting because of two characteristics.

The red “J” stamp
The large “EVAKUIERT” (evacuated) stamp

The big red “J” stands for Jew. A marking which was introduced by Nazi-Germany to identify Jews. Except you see this mark rarely, almost never on German Alien passports. But then there was the big red stamp “EVAKUIERT”.

The stamp EVAKUIERT is most likely about the deportation of 5000 Vienna Jews in March and April 1941 to the “Generalgouvernement.”

The General Government was an occupied area of the Second Republic of Poland that was under the colonial administration of Nazi Germany during World War II, from 1939 to early 1945. The Nazi government designated the territory as a separate administrative region of the Third Reich. In 1941 it comprised much of central and southern Poland and modern-day western Ukraine, including the major cities of Warsaw, Kraków, and Lviv. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the region of Eastern Galicia, formerly Polish territory which was invaded and annexed by the Soviet Union after the Nazi-Soviet pact, was incorporated into the General Government.

It’s said that only 70 people of these 5000 survived the end of the war!
(Alfred Gottwaldt, Diana Schulle: Die „Judendeportationen“ aus dem Deutschen Reich, 1941–1945: eine kommentierte Chronologie. Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-86539-059-5, S. 46–51.)

Now, the J-stamp was ordered by the Germans by law to stamp in every passport of a Jew since 5 October 1938. Usually, the date would be written just along the J when stamped. However, it’s missing here.

Page one is clearly stating “The bearer is not a German citizen.” The nationality on page 2 says “stateless.” His grandmother signed with three crosses as the Germans added: “des Schreibens unkundig” (illiterate). I assume his grandmother was one of these 5000 deported which gives this document a significance and makes it an extraordinary document of history when it comes to the Holocaust.

One stamp is saying that the bearer was following the registration obligation and the other one is just a renewal of the passport for another six months till 2 September 1940. Which means she had an expired passport when she was evacuated in February 1941!. It might be even another cause that she was evacuated as she was then illegally in Vienna as a stateless person!

The owner told me further…

“These documents were sent to my father in England when he left his mother and she stuck them on the train to get them to England. Many years later the family that was hiding her and my father back then, was able to locate him and send him her documents. My understanding was the Germans got her and she died in the concentration camps.”

German Nazi Alien Passport With Stamp EVACUATED