Polish passport issued by the Polish consulate in Antwerp (Belgium) for a Polish-Jewish immigrant named Isaac Klayman. The passport includes a photograph of Klayman and transit stamps from Poland, Belgium, and France, indicating his escape route from 1937 to 1945.
Klayman left Poland for Belgium at the beginning of the war. When the Nazis invaded Belgium (May 10, 1940), he managed to escape by crossing the border into France. Later, when Paris fell to the Nazi occupation (June 22, 1940), Klayman succeeded in reaching southern France, which had not yet been occupied. On November 15, 1940, he was issued a special Belgian passport by the Belgian consulate in Nice. Like many Jewish refugees, Spain, which was neutral, was the natural choice for escape. Klayman reached Spain via the Serber crossing point on the France-Spain border.
With his Belgian passport, Klayman was able to escape from the Nazis, but he was wary of staying in Spain. The visa stamps in his passport show that his intended destination was South America, with visas for Bolivia, Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela. However, he was unable to reach those countries and traveled instead to Vigo, in the southwest of Spain, on the border with Portugal. Upon arriving in Lisbon, he had to abandon his original plan and received a visa for São Tomé and Príncipe, Angola. His passport was stamped there on January 15, 1945.
Light tears on the edges of the passport. Good condition.
