Ancestral Tourism in Poland

12/08/2026

On Saturday, I walked around Białystok with a descendant of a Jewish family that arrived in the 1870s from Porozów. We haven't yet determined where exactly they lived in Białystok, so for four hours I showed him places connected with the Jewish community in Białystok, both obvious and less obvious, rarely visited by tourists. The photo shows one of them. In Białystok, we still have a few remnants of old textile factories. Here's the former building of Kapłan built into the apartment building under construction and former Chana Marejn factory building.

07/08/2026

During a recent search of the civil registry records of the Roman Catholic parish in Lida, I found two records of baptisms of local Jews. In 1840, a young man named Zelman, son of Szloma and Itka from the village of Strzałków, was baptized. He took the name Kazimierz Zabłocki. The second baptismal record dates from 1844, when Josiel, a 25-year-old resident of Ryłowo and son of Mojsza and Chajka, was baptized under the name Jan Majewski.

01/08/2026

My article on liquidation tables - documents from the times of the emancipation of peasants in the Russian partition and various archival collections where they can be found - has just been published in the magazine "Rodziny" published by the Polish Genealogical Society of America.

18/07/2026

Here are some photos from a genealogical tour in the footsteps of Lejzor Szapiro and his descendants from Great Britain and New Zealand.

04/07/2026

Some pictures from the genealogical tour to Gostycyn parish in the kujawsko-pomorskie voivodeship and Suchowola and Janów parishes in the podlaskie voivodeship. 4 family meetings, discovieries at the cemeteries in Chodorówka and in Janów, as well as in the archives.

02/07/2026

Today we visited the museum in Merkine, Lithuania, as part of a genealogy tour with descendants of the Szapiro family from Białystok (who trace their roots to Grodno and Rotnica). The museum in Merkine boasted about its guests.

Svečiai iš Naujosios Zelandijos ir Lenkijos. Domėjosi Merkinės ir Merkinės žydų istorija. Aplankėme memorialą ir Lietuvos partizanams. Šeimos šaknys iš Ratnyčios. Svečiai džiaugėsi Merkinės gamta, daug klausinėjo apie miestelio ir Lietuvos nueitą kelią…

28/06/2026

Last week, a three-day research project at the State Archives in Łomża included an analysis of various documents from the Kolno district. Among them was a fascinating collection of passport applications from 1915-1918, when Kolno district was under German occupation. Hundreds of applications were submitted by residents of the municipalities of Kolno, Stawiski, Turośl, Łyse, Rogienice, Jedwabne, Zbójna, Gawrychy, and Kubra. You may find photos of your ancestors from over 100 years ago. If anyone is interested in researching these documents, please email [email protected]

21/06/2026

I have conducted research in the parish archives in Nowogród recently. While returning back to Łomża, I saw very nice painting.

20/06/2026

A bit of archival research: Some time ago, I was contacted by someone whose ancestor, named Piotr Fiesiak, emigrated from Zaczerlany near Białystok to Russia in the mid-1920s. There were cases of people leaving for the Soviet Union in the mid-1920s and later. I have a family legend, unconfirmed by documents, about such a departure. This person wanted me to find documents confirming residence in the Białystok area after 1918, when Poland regained independence. I was unsuccessful. But I thought the most likely date was August 1915, when, just before the German army attacked Russia, a multi-million-strong exodus of people to Russia from the Russian partition took place. Some of these people returned to Poland after the October Revolution, while others remained in the Soviet Union. In Polish historiography, we call this exodus "bieżeństwo." But how can we prove this? I looked into the land consolidation documents for the village of Zaczerlany from the 1930s and found the information I was looking for. It turned out that one of Piotr's daughters had returned to Zaczerlany for a short time. After 1915, she married a Latvian, became a Latvian citizen, and was widowed. She came to claim her father's land. I found a number of documents relating to this family, but the most important was a certificate from the Choroszcz commune confirming the family's departure in 1915, which read as follows:

'February 4, 1931, Certificate

The Choroszcz Commune Office, based on the recorded testimonies of witnesses 1) Szymon Sołomianko, son of Filip, aged 40, and Szymon Popko, son of Alojzy, aged 55, permanent residents of the village of Zaczerlany, local commune, hereby certifies that Piotr and Marianna née Chwieroś, spouses Fiesiak, residents of the village of Zaczerlany, local commune, left for Russia in 1915, leaving behind in Zaczerlany 5 1/4 tithes of miscellaneous land, which Piotr Fiesiak inherited from his deceased father, Michał, and used independently for over 20 years. When the Fiesiaks left for
Russia, they had eight children: 1) daughter Łucja, married Bezubik; 2) son Jan; 3) daughter Maria; 4) daughter Krystyna; 5) daughter Stefania; 6) son Stefan; 7) daughter Maksyla; 8) son Władysław; they also left for Russia in 1915, from where, with the exception of Krystyna, née Fiesiak, married Abolin, a Latvian citizen, none
returned. Łucja Bezubik, who disappeared in Russia, left three children who live in the village of Bacieczki, Białostoczek commune. This certificate was issued to Krystyna, née Fiesiak, Abolin, for submission to the Białystok County Municipal Office."

29/05/2026

One tour follows another. This time, it was a tour in the footsteps of Jewish ancestors from Wiżajny and Rajgród. In both places, there are virtually no traces of the Jewish community left, and publicly available information is very sparse. In both places, the Jewish cemeteries were devastated during World War II. In both places, two synagogues existed, but a photo of only one, the later one in Rajgród, is still available. In Wiżajny, we managed to reach the librarian and creator of the Social Archives, Ms. Alicja Zajączkowska, who showed us the now-vanished Jewish Wiżajny. We know where the Jewish quarter was and have seen a prewar photo of it; we know roughly where the synagogues stood, and where the rabbi's house was. We saw three Jewish houses that still exist (one of them now houses a pizza restaurant). In Rajgród, we contacted the editor of "Echy Rajgrodzkie", Mr. Janusz Sobolewski, a local magazine published in Rajgród since the early 1990s. Thanks to him, we were able to see the exact location of both synagogues and the still existing buildings of former Jewish apartments and shops in the market square.