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GROUPING OF TWO CONSECUTIVE NAZI PASSPORTS AND A KENNKARTE - JEWISH HUSBAND & WIFE WHO FLED BERLIN FOR AMERICA DURING WW2 IN FEBRUARY 1941

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This lot consists of TWO original consecutively numbered Third Reich Nazi J-marked passports issued in Berlin on 10 October 1940 to Martin and Gertrud Baum plus the J-marked Kennkarte issued to Gertrud Baum in Berlin-Tempelhof on 11 January 1939. These rare identity documents are 100% original, and the Js have NOT been added to existing Third Reich German documents as they often have been on so many of those we see offered for sale online and at exhibitions nowadays.

All German passports used by Jews during the Third Reich are certainly rare 80+ years after they were issued. It is extremely rare indeed to see two consecutively numbered Third Reich passports with consecutively numbered American visas, as well as any such Reisepass accompanied by a supporting document like Gertrud Baum’s Jewish Kennkarte. It is also very unusual to find any Third Reich German Jewish passport accompanied by irrefutable provenance. This grouping is a treasure and it belongs in a museum or in an advanced private collection.

The German “Executive Order on the Law of the Alteration of Family and Personal Names” of 17 August 1938 made it obligatory for all German Jews with “non-Jewish” first names to add “Israel” or “Sara” as their appropriate middle name. At the same time Police Officials in Switzerland complained of being flooded with hard to distinguish documents shown by Jewish asylum seekers from Nazi Germany and the former Austria. Following intense negotiations with Nazi leaders in Berlin an agreement was reached on 5 October 1938 that became effective immediately, specifying that all German Jews had to have a large red J added at the top of page 1 of their passport to make it easier in part for Swiss police to identify them as fleeing Jews at the Swiss border.

The German side of the negotiations with Swiss Officials was handled by SS-Obergruppenführer Dr. Werner Best from the Ministry of the Interior, a subordinate of SS-General Reinhard Heydrich of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA or Reich Security Main Office), and Ministry of Foreign Affairs Senior Counselor Dr. Conrad Rödiger.

Visa and entry stamps on pages 6, 7, 8 and 9 of each Reisepass show they entered Spain on 28 February 1941 at Hendaye railway station in Spain along the border with France, and were scheduled to board the Portuguese freighter SS Serpa Pinto from Lisbon on 10 March 1941 bound for New York. Stamps on pages 10 and 11 show the Baums entered Portugal on 2 March 1941.

Many who read this will certainly be familiar with a somewhat similar voyage to America undertaken in May 1939 by nearly 1000 mostly Jewish refugees without visas aboard the small German Hamburg-Amerika Linie transatlantic motorship, the MS St. Louis, a voyage which ended in great tragedy. The first stop for the MS St. Louis was Havana, Cuba where a few of the passengers were able to land with hopes of obtaining visas for travel to nearby America. Unable to obtain visas, 907 of the refugees on the MS St. Louis were returned to Europe and many of them died there. In early September Russia and Germany invaded and divided Poland and World War II began.

With the Baums, they began to plan their departure from Nazi Germany in 1936 but their American quota visa number was not reached and an American visa was not issued until 24 January 1941! Fortunately for the Baums, they had prepared carefully and obtained German and other visas and their transatlantic transportation, so they were able to leave Germany almost immediately.

With that change, the Baums automatically became Martin Israel Baum and Gertrud Sara Baum in Germany, and their J-marked German identity documents clearly identified them as such. Martin Israel Baum was born in Berlin on 7 October 1893 and his passport states he was a Fabrikant or manufacturer. He had an average build, oval face, brown eyes, mixed color hair and wore glasses according to his passport. Martin’s wife Gertrud Sara Baum (née Rother), was born on 3 August 1896 in Leobschütz in Silesia, Germany which is now in western Poland near the Czech border. She had grey-green eyes, dark brown hair, an oval face, average build and no special identifying features according to her passport. While her passport states she was Ohne Beruf (without a profession) we know she worked at some point as a forced laborer at the Siemens electric works in Berlin. Martin Baum worked at a Nazi-confiscated clothing business in Berlin.

Both the Baum’s J-marked passports were consecutively numbered and issued by the Polizeipräsident in Berlin Abteilung II on the same day, 10 October 1940, and were valid for one year, or until 10 October 1941. The obligatory red J was added at the top of page 1 at that time, and the date was handwritten in ink along side it by the police.

A stamp on page 4 of each Reisepass dated 15 February 1941 shows that the Baums were given visas and allowed to travel to and through Spain as well. Both Baum passports also contain stamped visas from Germany (a one-time exit visa valid for one month), and a visa from neutral Portugal.

Both visas were free of charge and hand-signed by the American Vice Consul Stephen B. Vaughan. Their names on the American visas DO NOT include their Nazi-required Israel and Sara middle names!

In our decades as buyers, collectors, and dealers in rare Third Reich documentary material we have never seen a grouping equal to this one in many respects, but especially in the very late date (24 January 1941) on the visas issued by the Vice Consul at the American Embassy at Berlin, the capital of Adolf Hitler’s Germany!

On page 31 of both passports there is the rare historical visa stamp and emboss of the American Vice Consul in Berlin that made it possible for the Baums to undertake their journey from a life of uncertainty in Nazi Germany to one of far greater freedom in America. Martin Baum’s American Quota Immigration Visa No. 18890 and Gertrud Baum’s US Quota Immigration Visa No. 18891 are of course consecutively numbered, and both are dated 24 January 1941.

When he came with his parents to the USA in 1941 Harold Baum spoke no English, but got a job within a week of arrival. After graduating from high school in May 1943 he was drafted into the American Army almost at once. Private Harold Baum arrived in France as an American soldier in February 1945 just four years after he fled Nazi Germany with his parents, and he was soon back in his native Germany as a participant in the battle of the Ruhr Pocket. After the surrender of Nazi Germany in May 1945, Harold Baum returned to the USA but was recalled for service in the Pacific Theater of Operations. After the Japanese surrender in September 1945, he served in the occupation forces at Yokohama, Japan before returning to the US and entering medical school.

We know additional details about the Baums and their family as a result of conversations with their Berlin born son Dr. Harold Baum, from whom we obtained these documents many years ago. The Baums arrived in the United States in late March 1941 with their 18 year old son Harold who was traveling on his own passport. His detailed story and picture are part of an important chapter in the fascinating 2009 book The Enemy I Knew, German Jews in the Allied Military in World War II by Steven Karras.

Also included in this fascinating document grouping is the important original Nazi J-marked Kennkarte or civilian identity document number A 589 915 of Gertrud Sara Baum issued by police at Berlin-Tempelhof on 11 January 1939. The tear-resistant gray leinen (oilcloth) document has its original ID photo correctly overstamped in the upper right and lower left corners with eagle and swastika Berlin police stamps, as well as finger prints of her left and right index fingers. We have never had and do not now have the Kennkarte of Martin Baum or any other Baum family documents.

The remarkable wartime odyssey of Mr. and Mrs. Baum is a unique and fascinating one, and the buyer of these historic documents will receive with them the Steven Karras book The Enemy I knew, German Jews in the Allied Military in World War II.