Passport Portraits of Yesteryear no.49

Continuing the series of passport portraits in my collection.

Peruse and wonder.

Nicola Simitchi is a forty two year old post office employee from Serbia. In June 1914, one of his fellow countrymen, a student called Gavril Princip, assassinated the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, precipitating another conflict with Austria which quickly developed into the Great War.

It is now 1916 and the Serbian army has been beaten, allowing the Central Powers to open up their desired supply line through Serbia and Montenegro to their allies in the Ottoman Empire. It is at this point that Nicola Simitchi, who is living in the town of Gap in southern France, changes his dinars into francs in Marseille and buys a ticket on a ship which takes him to Rome in June.