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Szukaj w Archiwach
The Polish state archives' scans, free and without an account. Covers ground now in Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania as well as Poland.
https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/ ↗
Last checked 2026-09-22. Tell us if this has changed.
The ground it holds
Record regions whose registers are filed here, and for which years.
- 1793–1807 Prussia — South Prussia
- 1807–1815 Duchy of Warsaw
- 1815–1871 Prussia — Grand Duchy of Posen
- 1871–1918 German Empire — Province of Posen
- 1918–1939 Poland — Second Republic
- 1945–2026 Poland — Wielkopolska and Kujawy-Pomerania — THE TRAP. The German place names are gone, and the catalogues are in Polish. Schubin is SZUBIN, Bromberg is BYDGOSZCZ, Posen is POZNAŃ. The registers mostly stayed where they were and are held by the Polish state archives — but they are catalogued under the Polish name, so a search for Schubin returns nothing while the books sit in Bydgoszcz.
- 1772–1918 Austria — Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria — THE TRAP, AND IT IS A THREEFOLD ONE. From 1784 Austria made the parish priest the civil registrar and required THREE PARALLEL SERIES — Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic and Jewish — each kept by its own congregation. A family can appear in more than one and searching only the Roman Catholic books misses half of eastern Galicia. The Jewish series is JewishGen's ground, not the Catholic archives'.
- 1918–1939 Poland — Second Republic
- 1945–2026 Poland west of the San; Ukraine east of it — THE SECOND TRAP. The border of 1945 cut Galicia in half and its archives with it. Records west of the San are at Przemyśl and Kraków; east of it they are at Lviv and Ternopil, in Ukraine, catalogued in another language under another system. One province, two countries, two catalogues, and no cross-reference between them.
- 1871–1945 German Empire — Province of East Prussia
- 1945–2026 Russia in the north; Poland in the south; Lithuania at Memel — THE BIGGEST TRAP OF ALL, AND IT RUNS THE OTHER WAY. The population fled or was expelled and — unusually — MANY OF THE CHURCH REGISTERS WENT WEST WITH THEM. East Prussian Protestant registers are largely in Berlin and Leipzig, NOT in Kaliningrad. Looking for Königsberg records in Russia is the classic wasted year of German genealogy.
- 1815–1871 Prussia — Province of Pomerania
- 1871–1919 German Empire
- 1920–1939 Germany; Danzig a Free City
- 1945–2026 Poland — West Pomerania and Pomerania — THE TRAP, the same one as Posen. Stettin is SZCZECIN and Danzig is GDAŃSK; the registers mostly stayed and are catalogued under the Polish names, so a search for the German one finds nothing at all.
- 1742–1871 Prussia — Province of Silesia (Austrian Silesia stays Habsburg) — THE TRAP. Frederick took most of Silesia in 1742 and left a strip — Austrian Silesia, around Opava and Těšín — with the Habsburgs. Two record systems, two languages of administration and two present-day countries, for a province people still name as one place.
- 1871–1918 German Empire — Prussian Silesia
- 1918–1939 Divided — East Upper Silesia to Poland in 1922, the rest German; Těšín split with Czechoslovakia — THE TRAP, again and worse. The 1921 plebiscite and the partition that followed cut Upper Silesia in two, and Těšín was cut a third way. Three archives now hold what one parish produced.
- 1945–2026 Poland, and Czech Silesia in the south — THE TRAP that catches everyone. The German population was expelled and the place names changed wholesale — Breslau is Wrocław, Waldenburg is Wałbrzych, Gleiwitz is Gliwice. Records made in German before 1945 sit in Polish archives under Polish names. Search the German name for the record and the Polish name for the archive.
- 1795–1807 Russian Empire — the third partition
- 1807–1815 Duchy of Warsaw
- 1815–1868 Kingdom of Poland, in personal union with Russia
- 1868–1918 Russian Empire — the Vistula Land — THE TRAP. From 1868 the registers are written in RUSSIAN, in Cyrillic, and they stay that way until 1918. The same parish, the same priest, the same form — in an alphabet most researchers cannot read and most indexes transliterate inconsistently. A family that seems to end in 1868 has not ended.
- 1918–1939 Poland, restored
- 1945–2026 Poland
No places here yet
This map knows Szukaj w Archiwach covers PL, UA, BY, LT, but nobody has walked its catalogue into the shelf. That is a gap in this map, not a gap in the record. Help fill it →