Finding Jewish Ancestors in Poland

A guide to finding your Jewish Ancestors from Ukraine using Miriam Weiner's Routes to Roots Foundation.

Introduction to Routes to Roots Foundation
The Routes to Roots Foundation was created by Miriam Weiner, who is a genealogist specializing in the research of Jewish roots in Poland and the former Soviet Union. In her 30+ years of experience in Eastern European archives, she collected vast amounts of information and material. Much of her data was originally published in Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova and Jewish Roots in Poland, but is now available online through the Routes to Roots Foundation website. The site includes many resources to help you research your Jewish roots including a town-by-town index/inventory of surviving Jewish records in archives, maps, surname and Holocaust list databases, informative articles, and much more!

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.

Some ways to determine your ancestor's pre-immigration origins is to interview elderly relatives. Also search records that might give clues about your ancestor's birthplace which include Ship Arrival Records (aka Passenger Manifests), especially if your immigrant ancestor arrived after July 1907 (when the manifest was expanded from one page to two pages of information); if your ancestor came before July 1907 AND they departed from the port of Hamburg, then search the Hamburg Ship Arrivals which often include town of origin. Other sources for ancestral town names are: World War I Draft Registrations, World War II Draft Registrations, and Social Security Applications; among the citizenship documents, search the Declaration of Intention and the Petition for Naturalization, both of which often include town of origin, arrival data (date of arrival, name of ship, port of departure, names of relatives, and sometimes, a photo). Secondary sources for locating ancestral town names are marriage records, obituaries, and other documents such as cemetery records. In Jewish cemeteries, the burial plots are often named after a town of origin and people tend to be buried in these specific plots. Note, keep in mind that usually a husband and wife are buried in the same burial plot, but often only one of them originally came from that town.

See the Administrative Districts and Divisions article on Routes to Roots Administrative to learn more about jurisdictions in the Russian Empire and their modern-day equivalents.

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.

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 which archive the records are stored in and the archival file number. This information will help you locate the original record in the archive.

Also, after you have determined that Holocaust documents for your town are available, consider searching for 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.

To request a search from the relevant archive (identified in the search results), click on the archive name which will lead to a list of archives and you can then choose the exact one. Contact that archive to request a search of the specific documents (provide year and files numbers) for your surname(s).

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 additional 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.

Image Sources: Unless otherwise noted, all photos were taken by Miriam Weiner.