This identity photo is from the front page of a special identity document called the Nansen passport, after Fridftjof Nansen (1861-1930), the first person to assume the position of High Commissioner of Refugees at the League of Nations. The Nansen passport constituted a form of intercession on the part of the League of Nations to protect refugees and stateless people fleeing situations of conflict and humanitarian crisis.
In the interwar period, close to half a million Nansen passports were issued. This particular Nansen passport is from the early 1920s and belongs to a woman by the name of Vera Makarova fleeing the Russian civil war.
France would provide her with asylum. Presumably because she was fleeing with her daughter, Vera Makarova also appears alongside a young girl. Twelve years old in this image, the young Vera Obolensky (1911-1944) would later assume a critical role in one of the underground networks of the French Resistance movement in the 1940s (Organisation civile et militaire). Obolensky served as secretary to the OCM allegedly without ever writing anything down, relying solely on her memory to help prisoners of war escape occupied France. Dedicating her life to the cause of refugees, Obolensky refused to reveal any of her secrets to the Gestapo at the time she was captured, earning the nickname “Princess I-Know-Nothing-About-It.” She was guillotined in a German prison in 1944. Unusually for today, the face on the identity photograph does not appear alone and is partially obscured by a large hat with a veil. Nansen archives, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.