Poland

The Polish collection relates to Poland in its borders between the two World Wars. The material is in Polish, German, Russian, Hebrew and Yiddish, and covers the period between the 15th and the 20th centuries. Original material Pinkassim from Będzin, Czempiń, Grodzisk near Poznań, Rejowiec, Swarzędz, Poznań, Raków near Minsk, Wieleń and Warszawa, and documents, such as charters, regulations, decrees, population lists, community records, letters etc. from Białystok, Bydgoszcz, Dziewieniszki, Grodzisk, Jarocin, Katowice, Koźmin, Kraków, Krotoszyn, Leszno, Lublin, Lwów, Lwowek, Mysłowice, Oborniki, Ostrów Wielkopolski, Pleszew, Poznań, Rawicz, Sarnowa, Swarzedz, Środa, Toruń, Warszawa Wronki and others. Microfilms and photocopies: he majority of the Polish material is on microfilms, relating to over 1500 localities in Poland, the most representative being Będzin, Boćki Lwów, Lublin, Łódź, Kraków, Radom, Tomaszów Mazowiecki and Warszawa. Some of the films contain material produced by Jewish communities, e.g. Berezno, Chrzanów, Derażne, Klewań, Korzec, Kraków, Łódź, Lublin, Łuck, Lwów, Osowa, Równe, (and) Stepań, and Wilno. However, most of the material is of non-Jewish provenance, from government archives and from the collections of Polish aristocratic families, many of which are now incorporated in government archives, including contracts of arendas and trading activities, correspondence, complaints and supplications made by Jews; the records also contain legal documents concerning both community and individual Jew, i.e. charters, decrees and tax records (16th-18th centuries); a vast collection of records from the period after the 18th century Partitions between Russia, Prussia and Austria, such as decrees and instructions, correspondence between communities and authorities, as well as reports by and about the communities, communal statutes, finances, statistical data, membership, elections for community councils, appointments of rabbis, education, voluntary societies (charity, culture, sports, politics, women), internal disputes etc.; birth, marriage and death registers from communities in the area of Krzemieniec, birth marriage and death registers held at the government archives in Lwów (today Lviv) from communities in Eastern Galicia; records on the Jewish schools in Brody and Lemberg; records on Jewish refugees who fled to Galicia from the Russian Empire after the 1881 pogroms, including statistical data and documents on violence against Jews in Western Galicia in 1898; a rich collection of files from the period between the two World Wars, most of them from the archives in Lwów and Stanisławów (today Ivano-Frankivsk), containing information on the communities in Kołomyja, Ottynia, Stanisławów, Tarnopol, Tłumacz, Zabłotów etc. Read more