My father was born in a small town in the Bukovina a few years earlier
than that, and in 1913, the family moved to East Galicia--still within
that general area of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After World War I,
they acquired Polish citizenship. Then the Romanians came after my
father, claiming that he was a Romanian subject and had to do Romanian
military service. He had quite a time convincing them that they were wrong.
Postscript: Of course, when he came to America after World War II, the
US passport always listed his birthplace as in the USSR--because that
was the current political sovereign of the territory. This sometimes
occasioned some raised eyebrows.
Jim
On 06/07/2015 15:38, Mark Wiznitzer wrote:
>
> My father was born in Washkoutz, Bukovina in 1910, which was
> then Austro-Hungary. When he left in the mid 1920s it was Romania, but
> because he did not perform military service, he was later unable to get a
> passport and became stateless. He was able to travel however on a
> LaIssaz-Passer issued in Cura=C3=A7ao, which essentially indicated he had a=
> home
> there to return to. When he was stuck in Japan during WWII, he was treated
> as a "friendly" nation because of his birth in Romania, an Axis country,
> rather than as a Dutch resident. The Japanese wanted to trade my mother
> for four Japanese in Colombia, as she had a Colombian passport, acquired
> through her father's naturalization there. But she chose to remain with my
> father in Kobe. My father's status helped them to avoid internment and
> suffering. Then In the early 1950's, my father's Romanian origin again
> served him as the Romanian visa quota to the U.S. was undersubscribed.
> However, he returned to Cura=C3=A7ao after briefly immigrating and shortly
> thereafter acquired Panamanian citizenship and a Panamanian passport.
>[Mark Winitzer]
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Received on 2015-07-06 15:46:30