Passports of German Jews

Holocaust · Victims · Refugees/DPs · Germany

By Peter Landé

In the 1930s and even in 1940-1941, before major deportations, the Nazi regime was pleased when German Jews emigrated, since this facilitated the seizure of their property and the stripping of their citizenship.  Jews who had been arrested for various reasons were often released when they could demonstrate that they intended to leave the country.  However, the regime also wanted to know as much as possible about each person and lists were developed giving such information as profession, wealth, correspondence with relatives outside Germany and passports.  Some of these collections of information were found at the end of World War II by the Russians and taken to Moscow.  Some years ago permission was given to the USHMM to microfilm this material.

The following collection is a list of 500 German Jews who held passports.  The information on each person consists of family, maiden and given names, profession, place of residence, place and date of birth and date and, finally, name of the office which issued the passport, when it was issued and when it expired.  (Although the given names Sara and Israel were imposed by the Nazis and have no real basis, they are included in the database to fully represent all information from the source documents.)  All the information in this file has been entered in the database.

The file does not indicate whether the person actually succeeded in escaping Germany.  Further information on these individuals can be obtained by consulting the May 1939 census (available at LDS Family History Library) and various memorial books issued by the Bundesarchiv and various city and local archives.

This database includes 500 Jewish passport holders and their information.  The fields of the database are as follows:

Explanatory Notes:

• Given Name: please see the second paragraph in the Background Section for the use of the given names Israel or Sara
• Occupation: For help translating occupations from German to English, please see JewishGen's InfoFile at: German Occupation Definitions — English Translations
• Issuing Authority: The following table will assist with translations for the major issuing authorities.  In most cases you will find one of the following terms followed by the names of a town or city.

• Nationality: The following table will assist with translations for the major nationalities. In most cases you will find one of the following terms followed by the names of a country.

The information contained in this database was indexed from the files of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM File RG 11.011M reel 17).  Special thanks to Shimon Neumann, a JewishGen volunteer, who compiled the list.

In addition, thanks to JewishGen Inc. for providing the website and database expertise to make this database accessible.  Special thanks to Warren Blatt and Michael Tobias for their continued contributions to Jewish genealogy.  Particular thanks to the Research Division headed by Joyce Field and to Nolan Altman, coordinator of Holocaust files.

Nolan Altmanr
November, 2007

This database is searchable via JewishGen's Holocaust Database and the JewishGen Germany Database.