Genealogy can be an isolating pursuit, but genealogy societies and historical societies offer community with fellow researchers, as well as access to unique historical collections. Your research may be enriched by the opportunity to collaborate with other family historians and genealogists.
Polish Genealogy Societies
Polish Genealogical Society of America (Facebook page)
Historical Societies
Fraternal Societies
Societies in Poland
While most of the resources in this guide apply to anyone regardless of religion, there are specific resources available to research Jewish ancestors at NYPL and beyond.
Accessing international records can be the most challenging part of genealogy research, but once you've exhausted U.S. records and identified your family's place of origin in Poland, you are ready to explore these records.
Poland has many freely available digital libraries and archives which among other things offer access to materials important to genealogists.
Church records can serve as census-like registers of the members of a parish. Other key records like christenings, marriages, and burials provide valuable genealogical information. The language of the records depends on the denomination, time period and partition.
Roman Catholic- remains the dominant religion, contains Jewish and Protestant entries, Polish, Latin text.
Greek Catholic- Southeast area of Poland (Galicia). Latin, Ukranian, Polish text
Orthodox- limited members of Russian or Belorussian ethnic background. Russian text
Protestant- Anabaptists, Baptisms, Bohemian Brethren, Calvinists, Lutherans, Mennonites. Popular among German population, German text.
Records available digitally can be found in online databases. If the records are not available digitally, you may have to write to the archives directly.
Other institutions and archival repositories with Polish collections can be an excellent resource for your research.