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American Interests in Poland [6]
Patrycja19 .......Just got back from a trip to Poland , looking for lost relations in the " Stary Krai ". That part was quite easy, I had a village , the family name , and some old photo's. It took 10 seconds flat after having met the first person in the one road village.
But this would not be posible without some polish language in your vocabulary.
The second part of the trips objective was frustrated, even with the help of my polish cousins. I wanted to find birth records of my mother, Parish records for the period to cover 1908 - 1927 are nowere to be found. Not with the parish priest where they are meant to be, not with local archives nor indeed with the district archives, but they only hold 100 year old records.
This is not uncommon I'm told by a local historian, these records cover the details of people ,some of whom were taken from thier family home into forced labour by the invading German army.They also prove the identity to peoples rights to compensation for a number of injustices of war and later to the depopulisation of the Lemko people and the loss of homesteads.
One of the cousins work in the local registrars offices and she say this could take a long time to trace, so as a job for students to do in spare time could take things into a very long timescale. Fortunatly we can get duplicate birth cerificates by applying to the courts with the word of two local peole who are old enough to vouch to her identity. These people are all in thiere mid 80's so we may be lucky if we move fast.
