Before the Holocaust, Poland was home to the largest Jewish community in the world. The towns and cities of Poland — Warsaw, Kraków, Łódź, Vilna, Lublin, Białystok — contained Jewish populations that had lived, worshipped, traded, and built communities for centuries. Their records survive in greater numbers than many people realise, and a generation of dedicated researchers, archivists, and volunteers has made more of those records accessible online than at any previous point in history.
Researching Polish-Jewish genealogy requires a different toolkit than general Polish genealogy — different databases, different archives, different record types, and an awareness of the historical forces that shaped which records survived and which didn’t. But Polish-Jewish genealogy is also one of the most rewarding research areas in the entire field, because the community’s commitment to memory and documentation has produced resources that exist nowhere else. This guide gives you everything you need to begin — or deepen — your Polish-Jewish family research.
Table of Contents
- Before You Start: What Makes Polish-Jewish Research Different
- Step 1: Gather Everything Your Family Already Knows
- Step 2: Understanding What Records Exist for Polish Jews
- Step 3: The Partition Zones and Jewish Record-Keeping
- Step 4: Start With JewishGen
- Step 5: Search JRI-Poland for Vital Records
- Step 6: Use Yad Vashem for Holocaust-Era Records
- Step 7: Polish Archive Portals — Geneteka and Szukaj w Archiwach
- Step 8: Jewish Community Records Beyond Vital Records
- Step 9: Yizkor Books — Memorial Books of Destroyed Communities
- Step 10: Immigration and Diaspora Records
- Step 11: DNA Testing for Polish-Jewish Ancestry
- Step 12: When to Get Professional Help
- Polish Citizenship and Jewish Ancestry
- Final Thoughts
Before You Start: What Makes Polish-Jewish Research Different
Polish-Jewish genealogy shares many tools and methods with general Polish research — the same archive systems, the same partition-zone framework, the same vital record structures. But several factors make it a distinct research discipline that rewards specialist knowledge.
The Holocaust’s Impact on Records and Memory
The systematic murder of approximately 3 million Polish Jews during the Holocaust — roughly 90% of Poland’s pre-war Jewish population — created catastrophic gaps in family knowledge. Entire extended family networks were destroyed, leaving survivors with no living relatives who could provide family history. The destruction of Jewish community infrastructure — synagogues, kehila offices, community registers — eliminated many records along with the people who kept them. Researching Polish-Jewish genealogy frequently means working with significant, painful gaps and developing creative approaches to bridging them.
The Record Systems Are Different
Jewish communities in Poland maintained their own internal record-keeping systems — community registers (pinkas), burial society records (chevra kadisha books), and synagogue records — alongside the civil and church registration systems that governed the broader Polish population. Jewish vital records were kept by kehilot (Jewish community organisations) in some periods and by the state civil system in others. Knowing which system applied to your ancestor’s time and place is essential before you start searching.
Names Are More Complex
Polish-Jewish naming practices add a layer of complexity absent from general Polish research. Many Jews used both a Yiddish or Hebrew name (used within the community and in religious contexts) and a civil name in Polish, Russian, or German (used in official records). The same person might appear as Moshe in a synagogue record, Moyshe in Yiddish correspondence, Mojżesz in a Polish civil record, and Morris after immigration to America. Tracking an individual across these name forms requires awareness of the underlying naming culture.
Step 1: Gather Everything Your Family Already Knows
As with any genealogical research, begin with living family members and the documents they hold. For Polish-Jewish families, this gathering process has additional dimensions.
Interview Survivors and Their Children
Holocaust survivors who are still living — and their children, who often absorbed detailed family knowledge — are irreplaceable primary sources. Interview them with specific genealogical questions: full names of parents and grandparents, town of origin, siblings’ names, pre-war occupations, when the family left Poland (or when they were deported), and which relatives survived and which didn’t. Record these conversations; the information often exists nowhere in any written record.
Search for Documents
Polish-Jewish families frequently brought documents when they emigrated or fled — passports, identity papers, immigration documents, letters from Poland. These may be stored in attics, safety deposit boxes, or family archives without anyone realising their genealogical significance. Look specifically for: Polish documents with Cyrillic or Latin text, letters addressed from Polish towns, photographs with inscriptions on the back, and any papers listing full names, dates, and places.
Step 2: Understanding What Records Exist for Polish Jews
The records available for Polish-Jewish genealogy fall into several categories, each with different survival rates and access conditions.
Civil Vital Records
Jewish births, marriages, and deaths were registered in the civil system alongside those of the broader Polish population. In the Russian partition, civil registration of Jewish vital events began around 1808 under Napoleon’s code. Jewish vital records in the civil system are therefore searchable through the same databases — Geneteka, Szukaj w Archiwach, JRI-Poland — as non-Jewish Polish records for the same region and period. Many are in the same registers as Catholic records; others were maintained in separate Jewish registers within the same civil system.
Jewish Community (Kehila) Records
Jewish community organisations (kehilot) maintained their own internal registers — births, marriages, deaths, and community membership — independently of the civil system. These records are written in Hebrew or Yiddish and follow Jewish legal and religious conventions rather than civil formats. Survival of kehila records is uneven; many were destroyed in the Holocaust, but significant collections survive at the Jewish Historical Institute (ŻIH) in Warsaw, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and various diaspora archives.
Cemetery Records
Jewish cemeteries (cmentarze żydowskie or kirkuty) were central to Jewish community life, and burial records — where they survive — can provide birth dates, family relationships, and sometimes photographs of gravestones. Many Polish Jewish cemeteries were destroyed during or after the Holocaust, but cemetery documentation projects have photographed thousands of surviving gravestones. The IAJGS (International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies) cemetery database and JewishGen’s Online Worldwide Burial Registry are the primary resources.
Holocaust Records
The Holocaust generated its own tragic record collections — deportation lists, transport records, ghetto registration files, concentration camp records, and lists of victims compiled after the war. These records, held at Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), and the International Tracing Service (now Arolsen Archives), can document family members who perished and establish names and relationships when pre-war records are unavailable.
Step 3: The Partition Zones and Jewish Record-Keeping
The three partition zones created three different environments for Jewish record-keeping, and understanding which zone your ancestors came from shapes your entire research approach.
Russian Partition
The Russian partition had the largest Jewish population of the three zones — the great Jewish centres of Warsaw, Łódź, and the towns of central Poland were in this zone. Civil registration of Jewish vital events began around 1808. Pre-1868 records are in Polish; post-1868 records are in Russian Cyrillic. Records are distributed across Polish state archives and are indexed in JRI-Poland and Geneteka. Warsaw records suffered severe WWII losses.
Austrian Partition (Galicia)
Galicia had a dense and vibrant Jewish population, particularly in towns like Kraków, Tarnów, Rzeszów, Przemyśl, and the shtetlach of eastern Galicia. Galician Jewish records are among the best-preserved and best-indexed in Polish genealogy. JRI-Poland has indexed enormous quantities of Galician Jewish vital records; FamilySearch’s Galicia collection is extensive; and the Metryki portal hosts scanned images of many Galician Jewish registers. Eastern Galicia records are now partly in Ukrainian archives in Lviv.
Prussian Partition
The Jewish population of the Prussian partition was smaller than in the other zones. Civil registration began in 1874; earlier records are civil records kept by Jewish communities and some church-parallel registers. These records are held at Polish state archives (particularly Poznań) and some at German archives. JRI-Poland has some Prussian partition records indexed.
Step 4: Start With JewishGen
JewishGen is the central hub for Jewish genealogical research worldwide and the essential first stop for anyone beginning Polish-Jewish research. Founded in 1987 and now affiliated with the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, it hosts an interconnected set of databases, discussion forums, and research tools that collectively represent one of the largest genealogical resources ever assembled for any community.
The JewishGen Databases
The JewishGen Family Finder (JGFF) allows researchers to register surnames and towns they’re researching and connect with others researching the same family lines — one of the most direct ways to find a distant cousin who has already done some of the work. The GiladDB (Genealogy Index of Last and Alive Databases) aggregates records from dozens of databases into a single search. The Holocaust Database indexes victim names from Yad Vashem and other sources. The JRI-Poland database (see below) is accessible through JewishGen.
Town Research Pages and Community Databases
JewishGen maintains dedicated research pages for hundreds of Polish Jewish communities — covering the community’s history, available records, digitised materials, and links to relevant databases. If your ancestor came from a specific town, the JewishGen community page for that town is often the single most valuable starting point.
The Shtetl Seeker
The JewishGen Shtetl Seeker is an online gazetteer that identifies the location of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, including their modern equivalents and which archives hold relevant records. If you have a town name that’s changed or whose location you’re not sure of, Shtetl Seeker is the tool to use.
Step 5: Search JRI-Poland for Vital Records
JRI-Poland (Jewish Records Indexing–Poland) is a volunteer project that has indexed Jewish vital records from Polish archives — births, marriages, deaths, and divorces — from communities across all three partition zones. It currently indexes several million records from hundreds of communities and is accessible through the JewishGen portal.
JRI-Poland is searchable by surname, given name, town, and date range. A search result tells you that a specific record exists in a specific archive — it’s an index, not a scan. But knowing a record exists and where it’s held is the essential first step to obtaining a copy. JRI-Poland also indicates where scans of those records may be available online, linking through to Szukaj w Archiwach, Metryki, FamilySearch, or other hosting platforms.
Practical tip: Search JRI-Poland with phonetic variants of your ancestor’s surname — Jewish surnames were transliterated inconsistently between Hebrew/Yiddish and Polish/Russian/German. The same family might appear under multiple transliterated spellings in different records.
Step 6: Use Yad Vashem for Holocaust-Era Records
Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and research institution, holds one of the world’s most important collections of Holocaust-era documentation and offers several research tools directly relevant to Polish-Jewish genealogy.
The Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names
This database contains more than 4.8 million names of Holocaust victims, compiled from Pages of Testimony submitted by survivors and researchers, death records, ghetto and camp documentation, and other sources. Searching for a family name often surfaces information about relatives — their home towns, their approximate ages, and sometimes photographs submitted by family members. The database is free and searchable at yadvashem.org.
Community Records and Photographs
Yad Vashem holds extensive collections of pre-war and wartime photographs, community records, survivor testimonies, and documentation from ghettos and camps. The photo archive in particular contains images of pre-war Polish Jewish communities that provide an irreplaceable visual record of life before the Holocaust. Many are now available through Yad Vashem’s online photo archive.
Step 7: Polish Archive Portals — Geneteka and Szukaj w Archiwach
Jewish vital records registered in Poland’s civil system — as opposed to community-internal kehila records — are indexed in the same databases used for all Polish genealogical research. Geneteka indexes many Jewish civil vital records alongside Catholic and other records for the same parishes and civil districts. Szukaj w Archiwach hosts scanned images of many of the original registers, including Jewish civil records.
These portals are particularly valuable for Russian-partition research, where Jewish vital events were registered within the general civil system rather than through separate Jewish community registers. For Galicia, where Jewish community records are sometimes more distinct from civil records, JRI-Poland and FamilySearch’s Galicia collection tend to be stronger starting points. Our guide on how to use Geneteka covers the search techniques in detail.
Step 8: Jewish Community Records Beyond Vital Records
Vital records are the backbone of genealogical research, but Polish-Jewish genealogy offers several additional record types that can provide extraordinary detail about community life and family context.
The Jewish Historical Institute (ŻIH), Warsaw
The Żydowski Instytut Historyczny in Warsaw holds a significant collection of pre-war and wartime Jewish community records that survived the Holocaust. This includes some kehila records, the Emmanuel Ringelblum Archive (the underground archive created in the Warsaw Ghetto), community photographs, and documentation of pre-war Jewish life. The ŻIH accepts genealogical research requests and increasingly makes its holdings searchable online at jhi.pl.
Arolsen Archives (International Tracing Service)
The Arolsen Archives in Germany hold the largest repository of Holocaust documentation in the world — approximately 30 million documents covering victims, survivors, displaced persons, and forced labourers. The collection includes concentration camp records, transport lists, and post-war displaced persons documentation. The online portal at arolsen-archives.org allows free searching and requests for documents relating to specific individuals.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The USHMM in Washington DC holds extensive archival collections relating to Polish Jewish communities, including pre-war community records, ghetto documentation, and survivor testimony. Their online collections database (collections.ushmm.org) is searchable and many documents are digitised.
Step 9: Yizkor Books — Memorial Books of Destroyed Communities
Yizkor books (yizkor bikher) are among the most remarkable sources in all of Jewish genealogy. Written primarily in Yiddish and Hebrew in the decades following the Holocaust, these memorial books were created by survivor communities from specific towns — people who had escaped, emigrated before the war, or survived the camps — to document the life of their destroyed communities and commemorate those who perished.
A typical yizkor book contains: historical essays about the community, biographical sketches of notable residents, photographs of people and places, lists of victims (often remarkably comprehensive), survivor testimonies, and sometimes pre-war community records or family genealogies. More than 1,000 yizkor books were produced for Polish Jewish communities. Many have been digitised and are available through the New York Public Library, the YIVO Institute, and JewishGen’s Yizkor Book Project, which also maintains English translations of many volumes.
If your ancestor’s town has a yizkor book, reading it — or at least searching the victim lists — can provide family details that exist nowhere in any archive. The JewishGen Yizkor Book Project (yizkor.nypl.org) is the best starting point for finding whether a book exists for a specific community.
Step 10: Immigration and Diaspora Records
For Polish Jews who emigrated before the Holocaust — the substantial waves of emigration that occurred between roughly 1880 and 1924, primarily to the United States, Argentina, Palestine, and Western Europe — immigration records are as valuable for Polish-Jewish research as for any other Polish genealogy.
Ship passenger manifests often recorded the emigrant’s town of origin and nearest relative remaining in Poland. US naturalisation records listed birthplace. Ellis Island manifests specifically included a field for the last place of residence — often a specific shtetl. These records are accessible through Ancestry, FamilySearch, the Ellis Island Foundation database, and the National Archives.
For emigrants who went to Palestine and later Israel, the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem holds immigration records, community organisation files, and other documentation of early Jewish settlement that can be genealogically valuable. For emigrants to Argentina, the AMIA (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina) maintains community records.
Step 11: DNA Testing for Polish-Jewish Ancestry
DNA testing is particularly useful for Polish-Jewish genealogical research for a specific reason: Ashkenazi Jewish DNA is genetically distinct enough that testing databases contain a large proportion of people with shared Ashkenazi heritage, making DNA matching more productive than for many other European populations.
Because the Ashkenazi Jewish community passed through a significant population bottleneck several centuries ago, all Ashkenazi Jews share a relatively high degree of genetic relatedness. This means that DNA matches within the Ashkenazi community are common — but it also means that distant matches need careful genealogical work to distinguish family relationship from general Ashkenazi shared ancestry. Tools like the Shared cM Project and FTDNA’s chromosome browser help interpret the significance of specific matches.
For families with significant Holocaust losses — where documentary chains are broken and living relatives are few — DNA can sometimes be the only way to connect with relatives who survived on different branches, particularly when those relatives emigrated to different countries and lost contact. The DNA Detectives and Jewish DNA groups on Facebook are active communities that help interpret results specifically for Jewish genealogy.
Step 12: When to Get Professional Help
Polish-Jewish genealogy is a specialist area within an already-specialist field. Researchers with expertise in Jewish community records, Yiddish-language sources, and the specific databases relevant to Jewish genealogy can make progress that a self-directed researcher would struggle to achieve. The IAJGS maintains a referral directory of professional Jewish genealogists at iajgs.org, and JewishGen’s Research Services connects researchers with specialists in specific geographic regions.
Professional help is particularly worth considering when: records are in Yiddish or Hebrew that you can’t read, when the community your ancestors came from has been well-documented by specialist researchers whose work you’d benefit from, or when documentary chains are broken by Holocaust losses and creative research approaches are needed.
Polish Citizenship and Jewish Ancestry
Many descendants of Polish Jews are eligible for Polish citizenship by descent — the same legal principle of continuous citizenship that applies to all Polish descendants. The specific complications that apply to Jewish ancestry (communist-era citizenship decrees, the 1968 emigration crisis, the question of voluntary naturalisation for those who fled persecution) are covered in our dedicated guide on Polish citizenship for Polish-Jewish descendants. If citizenship is part of your goal, read that guide alongside this one — the genealogical research you do here will form the documentary foundation of any citizenship application.
Final Thoughts
Polish-Jewish genealogy is an act of memory as much as it is a research practice. Every name recovered, every record found, every family connection documented is a small act of resistance against the erasure the Holocaust attempted. The community of researchers working in this field — at JewishGen, at Yad Vashem, at the ŻIH, at archives across Poland and around the world — shares that sense of purpose, and they’re remarkably willing to help.
Start where you are. Use what your family knows. Search JewishGen and JRI-Poland first. Follow each lead to the next source. And when you find a record — a name in a Geneteka index, a photograph in a yizkor book, a DNA match who turns out to be a third cousin in Tel Aviv — let yourself feel what it means. These are real people, and you’ve found them.
Your practical next step is learning to use JRI-Poland and JewishGen together effectively. Our guide on how to use JRI-Poland and JewishGen for Polish-Jewish ancestry covers both tools in detail. Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly Polish heritage guides — including more content covering every aspect of Polish-Jewish research.
