AMERICAN GENERAL CONSULATE
VIENNA III RICHTOFFENGASSE 9

Visa applicants can send to the American Consulate all papers which they have in their possession regarding their guaranteed way to make a living in the United States. Documents which are more than one year old will generally be considered too old and it is therefore advisable to have sponsors send documents of a much more recent date.

Because of the current restrictions on travel, visas can only be issued to qualified visa applicants who are able to undertake the trip to the United States. 

Persons who are able to take this trip should make exact travel plans and supply detailed documentation about this. These documents can be properly signed or properly stamped letters or documents or certifications from a ship company or its agent and should contain confirmation that a seat for a specific ship and a specific departure date have been booked.

This General Consulate must be made certain that the visa applicant is able to make the trip within the dates of validity of the visa. Documents which correspond to the requirements listed above should be attached to this form and sent to us by registered mail.

YOU WILL AUTOMATICALLY BE INFORMED OF THE ARRIVAL OF AN AFFIDAVIT OR ANY ADDITIONAL PAPERS AT THE LAST ADDRESS WE HAVE FOR YOU.

American Consulate General
Feb.18 1941
Vienna, Germany.

Copy.

This copy of a form letter has the same censorship numbers as a letter we will see next week, so I assumed it arrived in the same envelope. The document helps us understand Helene’s urgency in yesterday’s letter.

One of the challenges for people trying to leave Europe is that they had to have all official papers, tickets, etc. in hand in order to travel. The dates on all the documents had to be consistent with each other or else travel was not possible. For example, the dates on train tickets had to work with the date of your ship passage. As you can see from the copy of the American Consulate document today, any affidavits regarding ability to support oneself needed to be recent. Dealing with unfriendly bureaucracies, governments that didn’t want you to succeed, an unreliable post office, etc. must have made the entire process nail-bitingly stressful.

You’ll notice that the address of Vienna is in Germany – Germany annexed Austria in March 1938. Like with the street name changes we saw a few days ago, in addition to all the fear and uncertainty of the time, it must have been incredibly disorienting to be living in a different country, even though you were in exactly the same place.