Document
Safe conduct pass issued to a prisoner in Djelfa
Safe conduct pass issued to Hans Landesberg in the Djelfa internment camp, releasing him to leave for Algiers. Djelfa, Algeria, January 26, 1943. Hans was born in Vienna, Austria, and went to medical school. After graduating, he left for Paris and joined a battalion of the International Brigade to fight in the Spanish Civil War. He returned to France in February 1939, only to be interned first in Argeles and then in Gurs. Some time after the French surrender to Nazi Germany in June 1940, Hans and other political prisoners were transported to the fortress of Mont-Louis near Andorra. Hans was then deported on a freighter to Oran, Algeria. From Oran, he was sent first to Algiers. In 1941, Hans reached Djelfa, an internment camp where the prisoners were housed in tents. He eventually received this safe conduct pass after writing to authorities that in 1939 he had begun the process to obtain an immigration visa to the United States.