Chapter 2 of 4
Leaving was not simply a matter of buying a ticket. Depending on the empire, a departing family needed a passport, a military clearance, a permit, an agent and a route to a port - or none of those, and a guide across a border at night. Each of these steps could leave a record.
Some of these records were kept in the village, some in the district town and some at the port, and they survive even for many departures that were illegal. Each article below explains one of them and where to look for it today.
Records in this chapter
Passports
Polish Passports and Passport Applications
Imperial passports and interwar files with photographs
Exit permits
Exit Permits, Conscription and Illegal Emigration
Why so many left illegally, and the records it left
Departure lists
European Departure Lists: Hamburg, Bremen and Other Ports
Hamburg, Bremen, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Gdynia
Research guide
Why the village name on your ancestor’s papers is probably wrong
What we do with these records
Departure lists, border control registers and interwar passport files are searched within Immigration & Passenger Records, and a known passport file can be obtained through Single Document Retrieval.