Dobry wieczór, I am a British woman with Polish roots. My grandparents were born in Poland, they fled to the UK when they were about 10 years old. Neither of them have documents to prove anything.

I would like to reverse-engineer the family tree to see where my ancestors were born. My grandmother told me that her father built a house with hisw own hands, which is supposedly still standing.

My closest family doesn't want to help me, it seems as if they are ashamed of their roots. I, however, have spent time in Poland and am in love. I have started to learn the language, too.

I would like to reconstruct my family tree. I know my grandparents' birthplaces, but after a little investigation, it turns out that there could have been at least a few places with the same name. So I don't know how I could start my investigation, can anyone suggest any way to go about this?

Thank you 🙂

by GreatAuntCalpurniaa

8 comments

  1. I would also really like to get Polish citizenship, I am deeply ashamed and suffering since Brexit and would love to move to beautiful Poland 🙁 My partner is Polish, too.

  2. You would need to contact Urząd Stanu Cywilnego, ideally in the place/gmina where they were born (gmina – the lowest administrative division). If they were born less than 100 years ago, then as a grandchild they would be able to provide their birth certificates. You would need their names and date of births/place of birth, although sometimes just names are fine.

    As a Polish citizen you would do that through the system that we have (Profil Zaufany), but given you are not, then mailing/phoning Urząd is your best bet.

    If your grandparents where born more than 100 years ago, then it’s all in the archives, but it’s in many places publicly available online, so sometimes is even easier.

  3. Might be a long shot but I took a DNA test and found a relatively (excuse the pun) close family in Canada. You never know!

    Have you got any details at all? Where in Poland are they from? Anythig at all?

  4. Cześć,

    do you know when and where your grandparents were born? If before mid 1920’s their birth certificates could be possible to find. Geneteka is free online database based on parish registers.

  7. Hello.
    I would start with documenting as much information as you can from your relatives: people names, town names, memories of places, like this info about a house (btw depending of the area and the time you are talking about the house may be there, but also could be demolished), time frame, dates etc. You are writing about grantparents’ escape. What years you are talking about? Was it WW2? Children escaping to UK: was it connected with Kindertransport? Are there any data in British archives, their naturalisation documents, anything which can give you additional clues.
    Then we can try to look into Polish archives and, depending on your data there are a lot of places to look into.
    Depending on what you have it can be easy or difficult, as a lot of archives were destroyed or may not be easy accessible. However I wish you luck, and patience.
    BTW: If you willing to give more details this place (redit) can sometimes do incredible investigations 🙂

  8. Szczelno is a plausible misspelling of [Strzelno](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strzelno) (by a Polish speaker).

    Otherwise, we still have rather little data. When where the grandparents roughly born? Did they come to the UK together from the same place or do you expect their birthplaces to be unrelated?

    You might give a shot using [Geneteka](https://geneteka.genealodzy.pl/index.php?op=se&lang=eng). If the family name is not too common, maybe you’ll be lucky and immediately find a trace, e.g. the name occurring in one of the mentioned locations (if not exactly your known ancestors).

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