Online Archives Poland
German Genealogy Pointers,  Polish Genealogy

Finding Online Records in Poland

Are you researching the regions which are part of today’s Poland including:

If you are, you may know that that access to records across this large Central European region can be difficult to find. The following article (Blog posting) provides an excellent road map of where to hunt.

The content format and material on the following material in this post is mirrored from  a posting on The Lost Shoebox. (I have mirrored the complete original posting so as not to lose its current, published, format). All of the links mentioned on this page may be found in our Links area as well. ManyRoads acknowledges all intellectual rights for this page as belonging to “The Lost Shoebox”. We appreciate their excellent work and encourage you to visit the The Lost Shoebox.

Online Archives Poland
Original Image from Wikipedia and modified by The Lost Shoebox.

Here is a collection of sites with scans/large indexes available, we have arranged them by voivodeship [a geographic region similar to a state or province]. While this list does not cover everything that is out there on the web, we wanted to focus on the sites with indexes and scans of records. This should give you an idea of the major sites for your area of research.

1. Geneteka – website
This site is a collaborative effort by numerous volunteers who index church and civil records all over Poland. They don’t provide the actual scans, but their index is very helpful and continuously updated. Many indexed records have a link to the scanned record if the record is available online. While they have indexes for all areas of Poland, we have indicated on our map the areas with the most indexed records.

2. Metryki GenBaza –website
This site has scans from a few different Diocesan Archives and State Archives. This site requires registration which is free. Nothing is indexed, so you will need to navigate via the links on the left side of the page but it’s very simple to do.

3. Szukaj w Archiwach – website
This site was launched in 2009 by the Polish State Archives, as of March 2016 they have 18.6 million scans available. They feature collections from all over Poland and are continuously being updated.

4. Family Search – website
Along with the many microfilms they have, Family Search also has many online collections of images.

5. National archives in Krakow –website
They have an online collection of things like census, church books, civil registers etc…

6. Lubgens –websitesome scans
This site is focused on the Lublin area and has a large index of the church books. Their indexes provide “akt” numbers which should help you find the record online at another site such as Family Search. They have a nice set of links that gets you directly to the parish records on Family Search. (see the list)

7. AGAD (Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych) –website
They have alot of scans for the Eastern Borderlands (the area of Ukraine, Russia). So you will find scans for the areas of Lublin and Subcarpathian as well.

8. Poznan Project –website
The Poznan Project is an index of marriages that took place in the 1800s in the Prussian province of Poznan. This collection as of March 2016 has 1.3 million entries and covers parts of Greater Poland and Kuyavian-Pomeranian. For a small donation you can request an actual copy of the record you find in their index. You can also note the information from the entry and possibly find the record online at one of the other online sites like Family Search, Szukaj w Archiwach, Genealogia w Archiwach etc…

9. BaSIA –website
This is an indexing project by the Wielkopolska Genealogical Society (WTG “Gniazdo”). The majority of their entries are for Greater Poland and Kuyavian-Pomeranian, but they are exapanding and you can see a map here of what areas are covered. (Give the map some time to load)

10. Genealogia w Archiwach –website
This is a joint effort by the Torun and Bydgoszcz State Archives that was launched in June 2015. The site features scans from 450 registry offices, mostly in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian area. As of March 2016 they have 3.1 million scans from various books and civil records.

11. PTG (Pomorskie Towarzystwo Genealogiczne) – website
The Pomeranian Genealogical Association (in English) provides online indexes to birth, marriage and death records for the Pomeranian area. As of March 2016 they have 3.7 million records indexed.

12.Archiwum Panstwowe w Przemyslu –website
This is the website for the State Archive in Przemysl, they have a nice collection of scans for the area. As of March 2016 they have 380k scans.

13. Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach –website
The National Archives in Katowice has a link to the Silesian Digital Library which has digitized address books. They also have a link to the Upper Silesian Genealogical Society which has scans of books using dropbox.

14. Archiwum Państwowe w Olsztynie –website
The State Archives in Olsztyn has a nice collection of online scans for civil and church records as well as some other miscellaneous collections.

15. Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu –website
The State Archives in Poznan has most of their records on Szukaj w Archiwach but they also have a nice index for the census 1870-1931, go here and type a surname into the search box, when a name comes up you can click it and go directly to the scan at Szukaj w Archiwach.

16. Archiwum Państwowe we Wrocławiu –websitemore scans
The State Archives in Wrocław has a collection of scans online, these are civil registers.

17. Archiwum Państwowe w Szczecinie –website
The State Archives in Szczecin has a large collection on scans for civil registers and church records.


ResearchFor additional free self-help on conducting German, Prussian, Polish, Jewish, Mennonite research, please visit ManyRoads' Prussian-German Free Genealogy Help page.

For additional guidance on conducting Shoah-Holocaust research, please visit ManyRoads' Shoah-Holocaust Free Research Help page.

If you are seeking professional "personalized" research support, please visit our Services page.

Comments Off on Finding Online Records in Poland

ManyRoads Creator, Professional Genealogist, Family Historian, ManyRoads Podcast co-host, Old Guy and most importantly 'opa'