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This rare Dr. Ernst Kisch document grouping is **SOLD**.

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As Third Reich documents and document groupings go, this set is among the rarest and most desirable we have ever encountered. Many of the documents in this grouping have never been seen before, even by advanced collectors. The documents include J marked Nazi passports, a J marked Nazi Kennkarte, Concentration Camp questionnaires from Buchenwald, documents from the Financial Section of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, the Emigration Department of the Israeli Cultural Community, a driver's license, academic records, and even an extremely rare Emigration Wait-List receipt from the American Consulate in Wien, Germany dated 5 July 1939.

Ninety-eight percent of this extremely rare material belonged to a single, notable historic figure, Dr. Ernst Kisch, and the other 2% belonged to members of his immediate family who acted on his behalf in emigration matters while he was at Buchenwald concentration camp. It is clear from these documents that Dr. Kisch wanted to leave Nazi Germany from the moment of the Anschluss or Austrian reunification and absorption into Hitler's Grossdeutschland while other members of his family chose to remain.

It is not clear what Kisch's crime was, but by May of 1938 his address was no longer a residential address in Wien, but Weimar-Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Through his family, Dr. Kisch applied to the US Consulate in Wien (Vienna, the second largest city in Nazi Germany), Germany to go to America and was placed on Emigration Wait-List 9 as number 19320 in July 1939. Through the efforts of US consular and other officials he was finally allowed out of Nazi Germany on Passport number J 43681 issued on 9 November 1939.

Thus began an odyssey so strange and heart rending that it takes its place among the saddest stories of World War II. The story would make an exceptional book or movie. In fact, a portion of the story is told in the 1953 book "Captive in Korea" by Philip Deane (be sure to read the excerpt right in its entirety) and in the book "In Enemy Hands: A Prisoner in North Korea" by Larry Zellers
The fact that Dr. Kisch survived Nazi concentration camps and very difficult times in China, only to be captured by the communists while working at the American Methodist Hospital in Kaeson, Korea in 1950, proves the truth really is stranger than fiction. Dr. Ernst Kisch was also mentioned as captured in Korea in a TIME magazine article in July 1950. He was starved to death and died on 28 June 1951.

The documents in this grouping are not documents that Dr. Kisch took with him to China, the United States and Korea but documents that were left in Austria for safekeeping with his family. We know Dr. Kisch had a sister, Grete, as she filled in much of the Nazi government paperwork for him while he was in Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

Dr. Ernst Kisch had an older brother, Oskar, who probably saved this material since his J-marked Jewish passport and Kennkarte are both included in this grouping (shown right). The Kennkarte is a standard Nazi Jewish Kennkarte issued 24 November 1939 in Wien, but Oskar Kisch's Reisepass or passport is unique in our experience.

There are forms filled out in 1938 and 1939 for the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, clarifications about what would happen to any property that might be left to him by others, and the necessity to make sure that any debts he may have had would be paid by somebody after he left the country. He turned over his bank account number and listed his assets in preparation for leaving Nazi Germany forever.

Oskar Kisch's passport (left and below) was originally issued on 6 June 1930, without a J of course, because Austria was at that time an independent country. He renewed the passport on 24 May 1935, so it was valid through 1940. In 1938 Austria became part of Nazi Germany and when the law requiring passports of Jews to be stamped with a J, the J was added to page 1 and dated 20.10.38 (20 October 1938).

Among the other documents in this lot are immunization certificates signed by a Dr. Adler when Dr. Ernst Kisch was a child. There are report cards from the Allgemeine Volksschule of the city of Wien when Kisch was a primary school student, as well as complete records of his performance at the K.K. Akademisches Gymnasium in Wien where he took his advanced courses, grading him on subjects like Latin, Greek, mathematics, physics, religion, etc.

In the best of circumstances one could not hope to acquire the kind of background information in this rare Third Reich document grouping for a person who simply lived his or her life and died in obscurity. To find a time capsule of this kind for a man who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, not only in Nazi Germany, but in China and Korea as well, is amazing. To find it accompanied as this grouping is, by examples of the documents required to leave Nazi Germany, is unimaginable. The grouping is unique and belongs in a museum or in the hands of a movie script writer somewhere.