Finding Jewish Ancestors in Poland
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Find the Town
In order to research your family in Poland, it is essential that you have identified the place where they came from. It is not enough to know only ‘Poland;' you must know the town name and the district/province name. The name of a nearby larger town can also be very helpful.
One of the best ways to determine information about your ancestor's pre-immigration origins is to investigate records in the country of immigration. Records that might give clues about your ancestor's birthplace include vital records like marriage or death, vital records of children or spouses, census, church records, obituaries, naturalization/immigration and so on. Find a Wiki page for the country, state, or county that your ancestor immigrated to in order to discover what types of records might be available for the area they lived in. See this page on Miriam Weiner's Routes to Routes page for additional tips on finding your ancestor's hometown.
In your research to find your ancestor's hometown, you may come across terms such as "gubernia," "wies," "rajon," etc. These are not names of towns, but rather terms for administrative divisions, such as province, town, district, etc. For help understanding these terms, see the Administrative Districts and Divisions article on Routes to Roots Foundation.
Maps of your Ancestor's Town
Miriam Weiner's website offers select historical maps of Poland, as well as a variety of historical images from towns in Poland that may prove useful in your family history.
Maps will help you locate places where your ancestors lived and give you context for the records you are using. Maps can identify political boundaries, place names, geographical features, cemeteries, synagogues, etc. Historical maps are especially useful for understanding boundary changes or finding communities that no longer exist.
Surname Databases
Over her 30+ years of working in Eastern European archives, Miriam Weiner collected vast amounts of material that can be searched using the Surname Databases. There are two surname databases - the Standard Surname Database and the OCR Surname Database. You may also be able to use the surname databases to help narrow down a more specific location for where individuals lived who shared your ancestor's surname.
Standard Surname Database
- Use the Standard Surname Database if you know your ancestor's given name, surname, or town name. This database is comprised of name lists from local historians and heads of Jewish communities, name lists from books, and name lists from various archives. Most collections in this database cannot be found online elsewhere.
- To search, enter a surname, given name, and/or town name into the search box. Collection results will then appear. The first column lists the collection type, while the second column contains the Collection Description (CD). The Collection Description includes information such as how the collection was acquired, references to Miriam Weiner's first visit to the town, photos (current and pre-World War I), links to other resources for the town, and/or document examples. The final column lists the number of records associated with the search term(s). Click on the blue hyperlinked number to view records, then click on the blue hyperlinked surname to see more details about the record.
OCR Surname Database
- Use the OCR Surname Database (optical character recognition) to search for your ancestor's surname. This database is comprised of information from business directories, address calendars, telephone books, typed name lists, and name lists from books and from archives.
- To search, type in the surname, and you'll find an automatic translation of the surname into Cyrillic appear in the second search box. Repeat the search twice - once using the Latin Letter search, and again using the Cyrillic Letter search. Searches may yield different results. Once search results appear, you may want to use Google Translate to help you navigate search results. If using the Chrome browser, right-click anywhere on the page and select Translate to English. Keep in mind if you are looking at a telephone directory, the original directories have been donated to the U.S. Library of Congress. View the original by selecting the Get Page Scan button.
Find Records for your Town
Archive Database
Use the Archive Database to locate what records exist for your ancestor's town, and where to find them. Search for the name of your ancestor's locality, and the database will provide results for known surviving records from that location, and where the records are held. Remember to adjust the search criteria for Soundex options or spelling variations. Review the General Information about the Archive Database section for some helpful resources.
This database contains documents such as army/recruit lists, family lists and census records, Jewish vital records (birth, marriage, death, divorce), immigration documents, voter and tax lists, property and notary records, Holocaust documents, police files, and pogrom documents, school records, occupation lists, local government, and hospital records.
Holocaust Lists Database
Use the new Holocaust Lists Database at Miriam Weiner's Routes to Roots to determine the location of Holocaust documents such as victim and survivor lists, survival testimonials and more. Holocaust Collections included in this database are from select towns in Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, and Ukraine. Database entries include information about archive the records are stored in and the archival file number. This information will help you locate the original record in the archive.
To determine what holocaust lists may survive, simply select the locality or town name you are searching form from the drop-down menu and select Search. Click on an entry to view additional information about the record and its location. After you have determined that Holocaust documents for your town are available, consider searching your surname in the Surname Database. Miriam Weiner has digitized many Holocaust lists and they are accessible through the Surname Database. Keep in mind that this is an ongoing project, so check back often for new information and updates.
Accessing the Records
For information about the repositories referred to on Miriam Weiner's Archive Database, see the Archives in Eastern Europe page which includes archival contact information. Contact/visit the respective repository for details on their holdings. For instructions on contacting archives and accessing records, see Q11 on this Routes to Roots page.
Poland Jewish Records
See the Poland Jewish Records page for more information and resources for accessing genealogical records in Poland.
Historical Photos
The Image Database on Miriam Weiner's website contains photographs and postcard views of many towns and cities throughout Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania, Poland, and other select countries dating back to the early 1900s. These include pre-WWI and current town views, photos of synagogues, Jewish cemeteries, and Holocaust memorials. It's a great way to see what your ancestor's shtetl may have looked like at the time they lived there.