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Genealogy Guide: Poland

The Jewish Communities Database and JewishGen Gazetteer

The JewishGen Communities Database contains information about 6,000 Jewish communities in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. This database contains each community's name in various languages and political jurisdictions during different time periods.

JewishGen Kehila Links (formerly "ShtetLinks") is a project facilitating web pages commemorating the places where Jews have lived. These web pages may contain information, pictures, databases, and links to other sources providing data about that place.

The JewishGen Gazetteer contains the names of one million localities in 54 countries in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

The data is based on the U.S. Board on Geographic Names databases. For each locality, the search results will display:

  • The place's name(s), with the native name in bold.
  • Coordinates — latitude and longitude.
  • Links to maps.
  • Country in which the locality is located today.
  • Distance and direction from reference point.
  • Link to display all places within a 10 mile radius.

Selected Websites

JewishGen Poland Database - Records indexes, business directories, Holocaust lists, etc. 

Judaica Europeana

Museum of Family History

The Postal Savings Bank throughout Interwar Poland: Spis właścicieli kont czekowych w Pocztowej Kasie Oszczędności - A digitized copy can be found via the CJH Digital Collections.

Virtual Shtetl – Search for your town in Poland.

Yizkor (Memorial) Books: some of the best sources for learning about Jewish communities in Eastern and Central Europe. Groups of former residents, or landsmanshaftn, have published these books as a tribute to their former homes and the people who were murdered during the Holocaust. The majority of these books were written in Hebrew or Yiddish. The Yizkor Book Project at JewishGen has made a lot of the information available through translations. For more information about Yizkor Books please check our website  (special-interest topics).

Regional Special Interest Groups (SIGs)

PolishRoots: Free databases, such as an 1835 Posen city directory, covering both non-Jews and Jews. 

Library of Congress: Digitized 1923 commercial directory for Poland and Gdansk (Danzig). 

JewishGen Poland Database