We’re very excited to have found Renate’s passport. It has
various stamps on it that show her movements.
It was originally granted on 17 July 1936. There is an
Italian stamp for 31 of July 1936. This
is the famous journey to Italy which created the need for the passport.
Remember her father had a massive row with the officials over that passport and
this was all because she was christened wrongly. Her name should have been
Renata Clara and she became Klara Renate. In the end he was told to go and get
her an adult passport and this may have really helped her to get out of Germany
when she needed to.
The passport was valid until 17 July 1941. By that time she
was living in England.
There are several stamps up to 1938- showing that she was
well off enough to travel and that travel was reasonably easy even though everything
was getting difficult in Europe, especially for Jews. Quite chilling are the
swastikas on the German border stamps.
There are transit visas for Switzerland and France. Her French
visa allows her a stay of up to fifteen days. Presumably this is to cover any
hold-up on the journey.
Her English visa shows that she was permitted to land in
Dover on 31 January 1939. This is a little puzzling. Her own account has her leaving
Germany 28 January. Was this memory not working properly or would it have taken
that long in those days? Or perhaps she was fictionalising her account. The
visa was for twelve months. She stayed in the UK for the rest of her life, and
became English in 1947. This passport could have confirmed dates for her.
In the passport we can also see some money transactions. In December
1938 she bought 400 Swiss francs. We can only assume that this was an easy
currency to use when obtaining sterling may have been difficult. This was worth
about £32.00 then, getting on for the £50.00 needed for the Kindertransport.
That £50.00 is the equivalent of £3,000 today. There is also an exchange of ten
Reichmarks for approximately ten French francs which presumably were used to
buy the French transit visa.
