When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
This passport tells the story of a young Jewish woman leaving Poland in 1948, three years after the end of the Holocaust and in the very year the State of Israel was established.
Issued in Warsaw in June 1948, the document bears the official stamp of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, confirming it was granted in the new post-war reality of the Republic of Poland. For Jewish survivors, obtaining such a passport was not just bureaucracy - it was permission to leave a continent marked by destruction.
The passport is explicitly marked valid for Italy. This was not tourism. Italy was the main transit corridor for Jewish survivors on their way to Palestine and, after May 1948, to the newly declared State of Israel. The route Poland → Italy → Israel was one of the central migration channels of the period.
In November 1948, an immigration visa from the State of Israel - Ministry of Immigration was issued in Warsaw. The round consular stamp confirms it was processed there before departure. This places the document directly in the first wave of legal aliyah after independence. The visa is marked for a single journey - a one-way departure.
Days later, a Polish maritime border control stamp dated 25 November 1948 confirms departure by sea. The wording identifies the Sea Border Guard of the Polish state. This is the physical moment of exit - leaving Poland through a controlled maritime crossing. A customs clearance stamp confirms formal departure procedures were completed.
Taken together, the stamps document a complete and historically coherent migration story: post-Holocaust Poland, official passport issuance in Warsaw, Israeli immigration authorization granted in Warsaw, departure through a Polish sea border in late 1948, transit via Italy, and onward immigration to Israel in the first year of statehood.
This is not just an identification document. It is a survivor-era migration passport from the decisive year 1948, reflecting the organized movement of Jewish survivors from Eastern Europe to Israel. All stamps are clear and legible, making the route and historical context fully traceable within the document itself.
Including photo.
Full document of 40p. All written/stamped/visas are shown in photos.
14*10 cm approx.
