When did we start using passports? - Kristin Surak

In 1941, in German-occupied Poland, the Nazis began abducting members of the Jewish population and imprisoning them in extermination camps.

But there were exceptions— the Nazis held foreign passport holders in detention camps to be traded later for Germans detained abroad.

With this loophole in mind, Aleksander Ładoś, a Polish diplomat in Switzerland, started producing forged Latin American passports and smuggling them to Polish Jews.

In the end, these simple paper booklets would mean the difference between life and death for thousands.

A striking thing about passports is that they’re actually a relatively new invention. They’re not the first form of travel documents: in ancient Egypt, travelers carried letters of safe conduct issued by rulers; in Han China and Tudor England, foreigners were issued travel passes; and in the 19th century,

poorer migrants often needed health certificates to enter the US. However, for much of human history, borders have been relatively fluid and travel lacked bureaucratic requirements.

But when World War I broke out in 1914, everything changed. Neighboring countries, and their colonies, became wartime enemies.

To deter both espionage and desertion, many European nations established checkpoints at ports of entry to confirm travelers’ nationalities.

Here, authorities would screen early versions of passports, which, depending on the issuing country, were documents that followed different formats and contained varying types of information.

When the war ended, many expected nations to remove passport requirements. In 1920, the newly established League of Nations discussed this, but in light of other post-war concerns, such as safeguarding national security, preventing the spread of epidemics, and managing the movement of refugees,

they opted to temporarily keep the passport system. To ease travel, they encouraged countries to follow international passport guidelines, using booklets of standard size and layout, written in the language of the issuing country and French.

But beyond this, every country was free to determine what approvals or documents a person needed to cross its borders.