The database ELA (Ewidencje Ludności w Archiwaliach—Registers of Population in Archival Materials) of the Polish State Archives (PSA) is a valuable resource for genealogists researching communities in current-day Poland.¹ Although many population registers were lost or destroyed during World War II, a surprisingly large number still exist and may be accessed.

One of the most valuable aspects of the ELA database is that it includes lists of books of residents (Księgi/Spis Ludności) that identify the towns and years for which they are available. Books of residents, organized by house number or address, offer a wealth of useful information for genealogists: names of residents, names of their parents, gender, place and date of birth, marital status, social status, religion, occupation, and earlier residence.² The ELA database also has lists of many other valuable population registers: concentration camp inmates, conscripts, orphans, passport applicants, pupils, soldiers, taxpayers, voters, and more. Although the database shows what lists are available in various archives, it does not include the contents of those lists. Information on specific persons can be obtained only by examining the documents themselves.

An English version of the PSA website, found at http://www.archiwa.gov.pl/lang-en/news.html, offers explana­tions about several PSA databases, but all information within the databases themselves is in Polish.³ Because the ELA database lists so many different types of documents, it is a difficult database to navigate without a basic knowledge of the language. A few explanations and a translation of key words can make the task easier.

Selecting “Data Bases” on the PSA website and scrolling down to “Registers of Population in Archival Materials—ELA” produces a long list of various classifications of documents represented by abbreviated symbols. The explanation for these symbols, given in the table on the following page, provides a notion of the wealth of materials that can be found in this collection.

After obtaining an idea of the types of registers that are available, click on “GO TO ELA SEARCH ENGINE,” and see the following:

Fill in the appropriate boxes to search for lists of documents by Town, by Register’s Title, by Symbol (using the drop-down menu), or by any combination of these criteria. Use either the present or former name (e.g., Wrocław or Breslau), but be sure to use the correct Polish or German spelling (e.g., Warszawa, not Warsaw). Polish diacritical marks may be used, but they are not necessary.

Town Name Search

When searching for information about a specific family, do not confine the search to towns where they are known to have lived; consider where they were born or might have lived previously. Some registers of population, such as księgi ludności, record information only for official legal residents of a community. The legal residence may or may not have been where the person actually resided.

Entering the name of a community shows all the population registers that have been preserved for a community of that name. The list displayed also will include all other communities whose names include the locality name entered. Searching for Łódź also will retrieve Alexandrów Łódzkie, Inowłódź, and similar names. One can easily scroll down to the name sought, but remember that more than one community may have the same name (e.g., Kazimierz, a town in Lublin province, but also the Jewish quarter of Kraków).

The display page has five columns:

Town

Register’s Range

Register’s Title

Dates

More

Sort the display by clicking on the top of any column. “Register’s Range” means the type of community covered by the documents listed. In addition to miasto (city/town) or wieś (village), the following types of communities may appear: folwark (estate), gmina (usually a grouping of small communities), gromada (district), kolonia (colony), księstwo (duchy), obwód (district), osada (settlement), parafia (parish district), or powiat (county). When more than one community has the same name, sorting alphabetically on “Register’s Range” to separate out the type of community (town, village, powiat and so forth), may help find the correct place.

If looking only for a particular type of document, click on “Register’s Title” to order the list alphabetically. A click on the “Dates” column orders documents chronologically, making it easy to view the documents available for the period of most interest. Many of the registers were created after World War II and may not be relevant to genealogical research.

A click on the “More” column to the right hand side of any item links to a page giving the name of the province (wojewódstwo) in which the town was located during the appropriate time period. The abbreviation refers to the classification type of the register, contact information for the archive where the item is held, the fond number (zespół, in Polish), the reference number (sygnatura), and the number of files in the fond. In cases where more than one community has the same name, clicking on “More” and seeing the name of the province may help determine the correct town or community.

When perusing the various documents listed for a particular town, the translation of a few key words may help decide if a given item is valuable. Among these terms are:

kartoteka (card file)

książki (books)

księgi (registers)

ludności (residents/population)

mieszkańców (inhabitants)

rejestr (register)

skorowidz (index)

spis (list)

tabela (table)

wybory (elections)

wykaz (list)

Words that refer to Jews are

mojżeszowy (of Mosaic religion)

starozakonny (person of the old faith)

Żydzi/Żydów (Jews/of Jews)

Register’s Title

Instead of searching only by Town, one can also search by Register’s Title. It is not necessary to enter the full title, just words that might be found in the title. For example, księgi ludności (books of residents) will produce the list of 649 registers with the words księgi ludności in their title. Not produced, however, is księga ludności (a single volume), księgi/kartoteki meldunkowe (registration books/ cards), or księgi kontroli ruchu ludności (books for population mobility control), all of which include similar information. Thus, this category of search should be used sparingly.

Symbol

Before it was posted on the Internet, the ELA database was searchable on a compact disk one could buy at the PSA. On that disk was a category “x” that referred to Jews. No such classification is visible on the current web page, although the pull-down menu does have a category “x” and, indeed, selecting it brings up various lists of Jews—baptisms, changes of names, registration of property, taxes, and the like.

If choosing to search by “Symbol,” first copy the symbols of the categories of most interest. Those with the greatest yield for Jewish genealogists are “lst” (ludność stała—books of residents, “meld” (meldunkowy—reg­istration books) and “x” (Jews). Searching by the symbol alone will generate a list of all registers in that class arranged alphabetically by town—an overall view of available items in that category. The number of hits may be overwhelming (12,660 for “lst,” 11,379 for “meld,” and 601 for “x”), but scroll through the list, note the towns of greatest interest, and know that the items are all the type being sought, regardless of title. Categories are not mutually exclusive; overlap exists.

Searching by “Symbol” also is helpful when wishing to browse because of uncertainty about the spelling of the town. Be aware that in the Polish alphabet, the name of a town beginning with a letter with a diacritical mark will be listed after all the names beginning with the same letter that has no diacritic; they are not intermingled (e.g., Ł comes after L, Ż comes after Ź, which follows a plain Z).

When wishing to limit responses to a specific town and a specific type of register, search on both categories at once.

Examples

To illustrate the variety of types of registers of interest, a few examples from several cities and towns are listed below. The list of available documents is quite different for each city/town.

Types of Registers

Kraków (Kraków Archives)

• Indeksy paszportowe (passport indexes), 1931–37
• Karty meldunkowe Polaków i Żydów (registration cards of Poles and Jews), 1939–44
• Spis ludności żydowskiej województwa krakowskiego (list of Jewish residents in the province of Kraków), 1790–92
• Spisy rodzin żydowskich w woj. krakowskim (list of Jewish families in the province of Kraków), 1811–12
• Spis ludności miasta Krakowa (books of residents of the city of Kraków), 1850–1921

Łódź (Łódź Archives)

• Księgi ludności stałej i niestałej (books of permanent and non-permanent residents), 1827–1931
• Lista wyborców Gminy Wyznaniowej Żydowskiej (list of voters of the Jewish community), 1924
• Rejestr poborczy podatku bożniczego (register of synagogue assessments), 1921–31
• Spis ludności (list of residents), 1918–20
• Spis ludności źydowskiej wg układu alfabetycznego ulic (list of Jewish residents by streets listed alphabetically), circa 1914
• Wykazy imienne Żydów osadzonych w Getcie (registration of names of Jews moved to the ghetto), 1940–44

Piotrków Trybunalski (Piotrków Trybunalski Archives)

• Księgi ludności stałej i niestałej (books of permanent and non-permanent residents), 1865–1930
• Listy nauczycieli prywatnych Żydowskich (list of Jewish private teachers), 1820–65
• Listy wyborców (list of voters), 1917
• Listy wyborców dozoru bożniczego (list of voters for synagogue trustees), 1860–73
• Rejestr paszportów (register of passports), 1920–39
• Rozkład składki bożniczej (schedule of synagogue contributions), 1841–73
• Spisy meldunkowe (registration lists), 1939–45
• Wykazy Żydów (lists of Jews), 1940–43

Warsaw (Archive of the City of Warsaw)

• Księgi Meldunkowe (registration books), 1928–1950
• Spisy studentów Instytutu Politechnicznego Warszawskiego (list of students at the Warsaw Polytechnic Institute), 1898–1915
• Wykaz pracowników Szpitala Starozakonnych ul. Dworkowa 17 (list of employees at the Jewish Hospital, 17 Dworkowa Street), 1936

Warsaw Main Archive of Old Acts (AGAD)

• Książki legitymacyjne dla starozakonnych (books of identity documents for Jews), 1834–62
• Lista rekrutów (list of recruits), 1839, 1844, 1846

To view an item of interest, choose one of the following three options:

• Submit a request to the archive for it to research the document
• Hire an outside researcher
• Go to the archive and do the research personally

Whatever option one chooses, the process is greatly facilitated by knowing what documents are available in the Polish State Archives and by having noted the title of registers of interest, the fond (zespół) where they are located, their identifying numbers (sygnatury), and the contact information for the archives where they are kept.

Notes

1. It also includes a limited number of documents from communities formerly in Poland but now in Ukraine, Lithuania, or Belarus.
2. Bussgang, Fay, “More About Polish Books of Residents’ Registration,” AVOTAYNU Vol. XVI, No. 3, Fall 2000: 14–15.
3. For an overview of the PSA website, see Mehr, Kahlile, “Polish Online Resources for Tracing Ancestry,” at http://adam.learnpress.esy.es/2010/10/online-polish-resources-for-tracing-ancestry-by-kahlile-mehr/, originally published at AVOTAYNU Vol. XXVII, No. 3, Fall 2010, 9–14.
4. At least one collection of population registers of possible interest to Jewish genealogists has not yet been indexed and included in ELA: Centralne Władze Wyznanione Królewstwa Polskiego (Central religious authorities of the Kingdom of Poland) (AGAD, Fond 190). The Jewish records in this collection are concerned pri­marily with the building and maintaining of synagogues, col­lecting contributions, and electing rabbis. Since all adult male members (and widowed females) voted in elections for rabbis, lists of names may exist showing how each person voted. Lists of how much money each member contributed to the Jewish community may also be found here. About 400 communities are represented between 1821–71. While these records do not supply much information about the persons listed, they may at least place someone in a given community at a given time.