Many people during World War II era, from Poland, lost family members as a result of the war. Many would like to find out if they are still living or not. The Polish Red Cross has been collecting records from the Holocaust, and are helping people find their families. There have been some success stories, therefore I recommend contacting them, if you are trying to find your family members.
You can write to them at this address:
The e-mail for the Polish Red Cross (Polski Czerwony Krzyz) is: biuro.poszukiwan@pck.org.pl
Their address:
Polski Czerwony Krzyz
Zarzad Glowny
00-561 Warszawa
ul. Mokotowska 14, skr. poczt. 47
Polska/Poland
Poland has strict confidentiality laws. They will not release information, which is under 100 years old on people's birth, marriage and death records, so it makes it very difficult to learn anything about anyone who was born less than 100 years ago.
If you have family that you know was captured, killed, put into concentration camps or put into forced labor in Germany, the Red Cross may be able to inform you of your family member's fate. It will take a while to receive the information you want, but they will do the best they can to locate records on your family. Give them all the necessary data on the people, such as names, birth dates, parents names, where born, and where they died. If you do not know where they died, give them the name of the place and approximate date of capture. The more information you have the better chance you have learning more about them. If you don't have place names and such, there is not much of any chance of finding out anything. You need to remember there were millions of people, who were affected by the War. The more precise your information, the better luck you will have.
If you need advice, please join the Poland Border Surnames mail list. Instructions to join are on the homepage of this website. We will do what we can to give you suggestions and in helping with names of places, etc. No promises ... just advice. Names and places must be in correct Polish spellings.
I wish you all the luck in the world in finding your family members, and piecing back together your family. I pray that you will find living cousins, aunts, uncles, etc.
Tina Ellis
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