Where to Find Polish Records Online



Do you have Polish heritage? You may have already discovered that finding information about your Polish ancestors can be difficult. One problem, of course, is a language barrier. Some records, especially those that are only found in Poland, are not written in English. There are other difficulties for genealogists who are working on the Polish branches of their family tree.

The American Ancestors website (which is run by the New England Historic Genealogical Society) points out that tracing the place of origin for a Polish ancestor can be challenging. One issue has to do with changing politics in the region. The result is that the record you are looking for could be located in what we recognize today as Poland – or it might be in what we think of as Austria, Prussia, or Russia.

Another thing to consider is that people from Poland often would give the nearest city as their place of origin instead of the village or town they were actually from. This gets more complicated when you discover that there could be more than one town or village with the same name as another one.

Fortunately, locating Polish records online is relatively easy. Here are some to start with:

Ancestry.com has some Polish records that you can access for free:

Hungary, Jewish Names in Property Tax Census, 1828 (in Hungarian)

Poland, Jewish Records Indexing-Poland, Births, 1550-1993

Poland, Jewish Records Indexing-Poland, Deaths, 1808-1942

Poland, Prisoners of War in Lubin, 1939-1941 (USHMM) (in German)

Poland, Auschwitz Forced Laborers, 1941-1944

Krakow, Poland, Transport Lists, 1940

Poland, Jewish Prisoners of War Registration Cards, 1939-1945

FamilySearch also has some Polish records that can be viewed for free:

Poland, Czestochowa Roman Catholic Church Books, 1226-1950

Poland, Lubin Roman Catholic Church Books, 1784-1964

Poland, Radom Roman Catholic Church Books, 1587-1966

You can also find Polish records on MyHeritage:

Poland (a general, searchable, list of data collections relevant to Poland)

West Prussia Church Books

Here are some additional resources for Polish records online:

Polish-American Marriage Database

Marriages in Plauschwarren, East Prussia: 1778-1802

Polish Family Information

Poznan Project – Poznan Region Marriage Indexing Project for 1800-1899

PolandGenWeb – provides visitors with research tutorials, maps (historic and present day), town locators and town lists, translation aids, archives addresses, and more. Volunteers have transcribed the records.

Polish Genealogical Society of America

Related Articles at FamilyTree.com:

* Why So Many Polish People Came to Chicago

* Polish-American Ancestors in World War One

* Polish Genealogy

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