This is my grandfather’s Austrian passport, issued after WWII, in August 1947.     His childhood was littered with Hitler’s atrocities against the Jewish people. When the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938, his father was arrested and sent to concentration camps for nine months, released on the condition that his family left the country. In 1939, his family went to Belgium to begin the process of immigration to the United States, however his father died in 1940 and the Nazis invaded again. My grandfather hid in a Catholic old age home until liberation on September 3, 1944. After the war, he reunited with his mother and brother, finished his last two years of public school, and learned English while the immigration process was underway.   This passport was the last step in that process. It contains two stamps authorizing European travel from Brussels in October and December 1947, and his immigration visa. His visa was from the American Consul at Antwerp, Belgium, dated October 10, 1947, his exit stamped on December 19, 1947, and his American admittance stamped January 3, 1948. He celebrated his eighteenth birthday on board the SS Marine Marline on his way to New York.     Upon his arrival, he began his new life. He earned a degree from City College, became a CPA, and met my grandmother, a German Jew who also immigrated post-WWII. Together, they created the foundation for my family’s future in America. My grandfather told me much of his story, just before he passed away in April 2014.

– Lori Greenblatt

Relationship:  Grandchild of im/migrant Grandchild of im/migrant