How were jews of neutral countries traveling trough nazi occupied territories treated?

by bartieparty

Would Swiss, Spanish or jews from not non persecuting allies such as Finland be able to travel freely trough the Nazi occupied territories? Or would they be a victim to constant harrasment? As a matter of fact, was it even possible for them to travel?

J_Palot

The simple answer is no. The Nazi regime wanted to make their territory “free of Jews”, so travel plans were only for exiting the region before being arrested.

(*)

But the simple act of traveling to get a “visa” from neutral countries to flee was full of dangers, as you can read by this testimony:

“Along the route many times they had to jump for their lives out of the car and hide in the ditches (…) but the story as told to me by my mother was of a horrific journey of fear and terror of being killed or captured at any time” – Irene Bluston

The “visa”, although didn’t altered your condition of “undesirable”, was seen by the Nazi as a guarantee that you were leaving the country soon, so they wouldn’t arrest you. That being said, they were still treated as inferior to Germans, but it was better to the alternative.

But getting a “visa” wasn’t as simple as you think. You need to consider the amount of people in the same situation, and the fact that many countries had a strict quota of refugees and/or the selection criteria were getting very restricted. So people were traveling with the possibility of rejection, therefore rising the risk of capture.

Sources:

http://sousamendesfoundation.org/visa-recipients/ (website with 1º person testimonies on the Portuguese side)

http://sousamendesfoundation.org/family/van-esso-vecht

http://sousamendesfoundation.org/family/kleinberg-leinkram-tolkowsky

(*) I can’t prove this next statement, but I vaguely remember reading that the Nazi issued a warning to people from neutral countries to exit the country if they were considered “undesirable” to them before starting to arrest them.