For many families, discovering Polish-Jewish ancestry is more than a hobby—it’s a deeply personal journey to reconnect with a lost or fragmented past. Whether you’re driven by curiosity, identity, or honoring family history, tracing your Jewish roots in Poland can be incredibly rewarding… if you know where to begin.
This guide will walk you through the process step by step, providing clear direction, practical tools, and essential resources for starting your Polish-Jewish genealogy journey.
Before you look overseas, start at home. Even the smallest detail—a first name, a city, a trade—can make a big difference.
You might be surprised by how much you already know!
Tips:
Interview older relatives. Ask about names, places, dates, migration stories.
Look through old photos, letters, passports, or naturalization documents.
Review sources from your own country such as: census recorda, ship manifests, naturalization record, obituaries and cemetery records, Social Security applications (in the United States) and military files.
Draw a family tree Keep a digital log of everything you find, and organize it by person or family group.
It also helps to sketch a simple family tree by hand—this can clarify relationships and make them easier to visualize as your research grows.
The photo of Ruta Mandelbaum, 1932. Source: private
One of the biggest challenges in Polish-Jewish genealogy is identifying the exact town or village your ancestors came from. Quite often it was simply listed “Russia”, “Prussia” or “Austria” (depending on which partition of Poland their town belonged to at the time) on immigration forms which only makes everything even trickier.
Try to:
Determine which partition (Russian, Austrian, or Prussian) your ancestral town belonged to—this can help narrow your geographic search significantly
Search through the immigration and naturalization records
Read the ship manifests carefully—pay special attention to three columns: Last permanent place of residence, The name and complete address of nearest relative or friend in country whence alien came, and Place of birth (usually the last one)
Check your family name. If your surname is uncommon, try using JRI-Poland to see in which region it was most commonly found—this can provide helpful geographic clues
Poland’s borders shifted dramatically over the last 200 years. Between the Partitions of Poland, Austro-Hungarian rule, and interwar Poland, your ancestors’ hometown may now be within the borders of modern-day Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, or Lithuania.
Use tools like:
Mapy Wig (historical Polish maps online)
Regional and historical books
Also consider waves of Jewish emigration: late 1800s, WWI, interwar period, and Holocaust escape routes.
Before diving into Polish archives, exhaust available American records that might mention ancestral details.
Key sources:
Ancestry and MyHeritage (immigration & census)
JRI- Poland and JewishGen.org (the indexes of Jewish birth, marriage and death certificates – extremely helpful, but not complete!)
Yad Vashem (Holocaust victim databases)
United States Holocaust Memorial Musem (search for names)
Use FindAGrave or BillionGraves to locate Jewish cemetery records with Hebrew inscriptions, which often mention the deceased’s father’s name and town of origin.
Jewish cemetery in Legnica. Photo: Marta Maćkowiak
Once you have a town, you can start looking for Polish records—but here’s the catch: they’re complex, and not always online.
Types of Records:
Birth (older than 100 years old), marriage and death certificates (older than 80 years old) in the State Archive (Archiwum Państwowe)
Census records, residency books, notary records, military and student files
War-era documents and survivor registries
Where to look (only a few helpful sources, there are much more, but it is difficult to enlist all of them):
Polish State Archives (many documents are scanned and you can find them in several databases, the most popular are: Szukaj w Archiwach, Skanoteka and Metryki Genbaza)
Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw (for example the survivor registries)
Local Urząd Stanu Cywilnego (Civil Registry Offices) – if you’re looking for the birth record younger than 100 years old or marriage and death certificates younger than 80 years old
Many records are not digitized or require in-person access—which is where a local genealogist becomes extremely helpful.
The death record of Chana Ester Alpern, Łódź, 1910. Source: The State Archive in Łódź
Two essential tools for Jewish genealogy:
Use both sites together to triangulate information. When you find an indexed record, note the archive and record number—then request the original scan (or hire a genealogist to retrieve it locally).
Jewish surnames in Poland often changed over time—or were recorded differently depending on the record keeper and partition.
Common issues:
Transliteration from Russian (Cyrillic) to Polish (Latin alphabet)
Misspellings or phonetic versions in the immigration records
📌 Example: Moshe could appear as Moszek, Mowsza, Mojsze, Możesz, Mosiek. American Irving could have been born as Srul and its Hebrew version is Israel.
Yiddish Lejb is Hebrew Arie and similarily Zlata is Golda, Fajga is Cipora and Hersz is Tzvi.
There are many more examples like this, so stay open to different versions of the same name.
While DNA won’t give you documents, it can help:
Confirm ancestral origins (e.g., Ashkenazi Jewish heritage)
Identify living relatives
Validate or challenge family stories
Recommended tests:
AncestryDNA (the biggest database)
MyHeritage (most popular in Poland)
FamilyTreeDNA (offers Y-DNA and mtDNA for deeper lineage tracing)
Combine genetic matches with archival research for best results.
As your research grows, keep your records organized:
Use software like MacFamilyTree (I use this one myself) or online trees (Ancestry/MyHeritage)
Back up everything!
Create a simple family narrative or visual tree to share with relatives
Consider publishing your story. Your research could also help others—especially descendants of Holocaust survivors or those with fragmented family trees.
Tracing your Polish-Jewish roots is a journey that blends mystery, discovery, grief, and pride. You may encounter gaps and heartbreak—but you’ll also uncover courage, survival, and connection.
Don’t let distance or complexity stop you. Begin with what you have, take it step by step, and know that help is available along the way—from online resources to expert researchers in Poland.
If you’re ready to explore your family history but feel overwhelmed (the trail goes cold or the language barrier becomes too much), I will gladly assist you. As a professional genealogist with over 10 years of experience, living in Poland and sharing a similar background to yours, I can offer you:
Vital record retrieval
Uncovering and understanding family secrets
Understanding Polish and Polish Jewish identity
Contact me today to start uncovering your family story 
Marta
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