What Jewish Migration Stories are Told by the Lithuanian Foreign Passport from the Interwar Period?

Eastern European Jewish migration is a separate field of Jewish historical study because of the scope and complexity of the process. The migration of Eastern European Jews is viewed by foreign scholars through a sociocultural prism. However, in Lithuania, there is a lack of local research that could complement the existing international research. The aim of the presentation is to introduce different models of Jewish migration based on foreign passports issued in Lithuania between 1918–1939. Undoubtedly, each Eastern European country had its peculiarities in migration considering the legal, economic, and social environment of the country. The biggest methodological problem in contemporary Lithuanian migration historiography is the lack of a socio-cultural perspective of Jewish emigration in the interwar period. It is very important to understand that emigration was not only driven by economic reasons but was also a socio-cultural process. Every single migration has a story, but not all of them were told in interviews or written down in memoirs. Foreign passports as a historical source allow us to identify and systematize different categories of migrants. Passports contain personal information such as first/last name, age, gender, nationality, religion, place of birth, place of residence, marital status, occupation, etc. And more importantly, they enable research into the destination, mode of travel, itinerary and duration of travel. The rich homogeneous material makes it possible to compare Jewish communities that migrated to different countries and to study how migration is related to marital status, age, gender and occupation. Finally, did they all choose to emigrate? Bringing this research into the scholarly circuit will open up the possibility of reconstructing a more dynamic process of Jewish emigration from interwar Lithuania.