Papers, please!
Till around a century ago, in many parts of the world, one could travel without personal identification papers, even crossing national borders. A former army officer, Franz von Papen, who made it to the highest political offices of the Weimar Republic has testified to that. That state of affairs has changed. Today, there are a great many countries where one needs to carry a personal identification card constantly, and countries where one may get stopped by the police and asked to produce such a card, at any time.
Not having papers can mean imprisonment, execution or transportation to a labor camp; torture, starvation and dysentery are in the offing.
