My Poland born father served in a foreign army - Polish citizenship questions

Not really out of date - the law still stands for their descendants.


He isn't Polish.


I'm sure that will make all the difference.

The larger problem is 1) that the archives are not quite open for inspection by the public, and 2) the government is making discriminatory presumptions against citizenship rights which are not supported by the documents in the archive. This results in the typical circles that Polish bureaucrats led the unwary. It requires a good lawyer to brake out of the spiral of nonsense. Why should a Polish holocaust survivor who fled communism after the war be presumed to have completed his military obligations to Poland? Poland is better than this. They are also costing the state money since genealogists would pay to research their family and receive these documents. There is a good arguable case that the government is violating the constitution of Poland and basic human rights in its polices.


It was replaced by a law in 1951 that was more restrictive and required actual government approval before Polish citizenship can be lost which remains in force today. The issue is whether a person was born a Polish citizen after 1920 and before 1951 should be presumed to have lost his citizenship absent any record in the archives supporting that presumption.

You are right of course I meant milliband, I was just reading an article on tony , my bad sorry tony.

"Not really out of date - the law still stands for their descendants."

Well in my opinon that law is dated and needs to be updated to reflect modern day population needs of Poland

This doesn't impact on giving passports to Americans with no real connection with Poland, only a great-grandparent who left a century ago.

Well to be fair Jon you had your opportunity because you were a EU Citizen , but that is going to change with Brexit and sadly others from the UK will not be able to come to Poland in the same way.

Yes it may seem odd , but if folks have the heart to come to Poland and are interviwed and means tested financially, and pass background checks for criminality etc then why not give the a chance for initial residency and then a path to citizenship, in the same way you were given that oportunity, it only seems fair to me.

It's my impression the OP is not interested in any of that, he just wants Polish citizenship for some other reason...

Actually Dolno, you're right - they actually have that opportunity. Poland gives permanent residency to anyone that can demonstrate a link to Poland - so if you have a Polish great-grandmother and a history of taking part in Polonia affairs, you can get it very easily. It's very fair - from permanent residency, all you need is 2-3 years of residency and an intermediate level of Polish.

The poster known as "Rights Watchdog", "Legal Eagle" among others seems to be fixated with the idea that Poland is somehow denying him citizenship that he thinks he deserves, even though he has no documentation to prove his claim.

Oh ok.

They have that right now. The problem is that some of them think that merely failing to pay taxes they owe in Poland shouldn't deprive them of the right to use the rights Poles enjoy to work in the rest of the EU.

No it isn't - free movement is likely to continue, and it doesn't affect me anyway. Not that this is particularly relevant to the thread which is about someone outside the EU who would like to claim Polish citizenship but is having potential issues due to lack of documents.


I agree with that. There are plenty of people round the world, in non-EU Europe, India, the Middle East, Africa etc who would meet those criteria and could settle in Poland.

People who try to claim they have existing Polish citizenship which in fact they don't and wish to avoid the normal procedures are a different matter - by all means let them take the same route to citizenship as the rest of us.

The OP has stated that she is a she. Her claim is that her grandfather was born in 1922 and turned 21 during the Nazi occupation of Poland when he was legally obligated to serve in the army of the Second Polish Republic. He, like many others of his generation, refused to return to live under a communist regime imposed by an occupying Soviet army. For that decision, her claim to citizenship was denied by a Polish bureaucrat who failed to follow Polish statutory law, and instead created a presumption that her grandfather's military obligations to Poland had been met absent any documentation for that claim in the archives. (Under Polish statutory law, this administrator has the power to demand whatever is needed from various governmental records.) Here it is the government that cannot prove its claim, not the petitioner.

Why should someone who was born a Polish citizen, with a constitutional right to live abroad with the protection of the Polish state, be required to return to Poland and establish residency, while living as a second class citizen, when she was born a Polish citizen? While living abroad she has no tax obligations to Polish state, and it is curious that the Clown Car here thinks this is about paying taxes. Their suggestion is that her grandfather owed the Polish government taxes for the free food and clothes given to him by the Nazis.

Is it any wonder that many Jews believe that there is a conspiracy in Poland to hide property records proving Jews are owed money by the Polish government?

Why is she mucking on about her grandfather, citizenship doesn't skip generations, she should be able to prove that her parents are/were Polish citizens.

The Polish government is claiming that her grandfather lost his Polish citizenship when he was enlisted in the Israeli Army, and therefore had no Polish citizenship to pass to her parent. Since the 1951 Polish citizenship law et seq. makes it impossible to lose citizenship without a record in the Polish government files, the trick being employed by the government here doesn't work for anyone born after around 1934. It is an added bureaucratic headache for anyone applying for citizenship from a grandparent who could have lost citizenship but didn't under the 1920 citizenship law. The present administrative presumption from the government is that all citizens of the Second Republic living abroad lost citizenship when they refused to return to the communist state. That is contrary to the Polish Constitution's guarantee of the protection of the Polish state for those Poles living abroad.

In these cases there's always something that they're not saying.

What she didn't write was that her family returned to Poland to live under communism. Since the communists scapegoated the remaining Jews, and expelled most of them from Poland, there was no reason for them to have even attempted this. Few Poles living in the West recognized the communist regime as the legitimate government of Poland, and therefore did not register themselves or their children with it. That is the core of the problem here.

But internationally it was recognized (by UN etc) and the parents seemed to have de facto given up citizenship in order to live in a free country rather than deal with the ordeal of everyday life in a communist country. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me (one I would have taken in those circumstances in a heartbeat) but that does leave the OP without a realistic path to citizenship except for moving to Poland.

Dunno my parents remained in the uk after the war, father had served in the British army for eight years, true no way they would have gone back to the coomie B$stard regime, But I had my citizenship confirmed in 3 months no problem.

But not de jure. The creation of a presumption that citizenship was lost due to allegiance to the government in exile in London is nothing more than political discrimination. With a good lawyer, her case can be won. It is simply surprising that the present regime would choose to continue past practices. It is against their political interests, so it may get reversed if enough people understand the present state of affairs.

listen ...dog/ the law of the Polish Second Republic was quite clear on the issue of a citizen that enlist to a foreign army. He loses automatically his citizenship. If that dude enlisted into a foreign army before the year1947, he or his progeny have no claim.

As to Soviet Poland's laws. who cares?

Nowadays it is pretty easy for any Dick or Harry to walk into Poland offices and claim cintziship due to ancestry. Great grandpa, Grandpa or dad or mammie has to have had a Polish citizenship. If they refused to recognize it, they must have a valid reason.


That would do the Trick too.

Have you actually read the statute? Roman Wisniewski, a Polish lawyer in Warsaw, has posted an English translation online with a detailed explanation of the "military paradox" here:

polishcitizenship.pl/law/
Do you disagree with his translation of the last sentence (or two depending on the punctuation) of Article 11 of the Polish Citizenship Act of 1920?
See here:
cklawoffice.eu/polish-citizenship-law.html#1
(I would quote it, but that seems to be against the rules here for some reason.) Unlike you, he is a practicing lawyer in Poland.

The Second Polish Republic was a much different place than what followed. It was founded in no small part by 20,000 to 25,000 Polish immigrants in North America who returned to fight for Poland's independence first in France under Gen. Haller, and then in Poland against the Bolsheviks. Criticized by its detractors as overly nationalistic, and attempting to create a "Poland for Poles", it was eager to have those who left the partitions return as citizens. The final wording of Article 11 was in there for a reason. They wanted people living in the West to return, and serving in a foreign army was no barrier to continued citizenship under certain circumstances, i.e., permission from the government, or failure to serve first in Poland's military, etc. The Third Republic was not the Second. The Third Republic was happy for trouble makers to leave, so immigration served as a release valve for political problems, i.e., like expelling the Jews.


Was he in Anders' Army? That has gotten reclassified in recent years as a Polish expeditionary army even though it was under foreign command. The commies, of course, considered it a foreign army. They rightfully feared that Anders might lead it against them.

Yep he was , I understand that after the handover of seals from the Polish government in exile his Polish medals awarded in the UK have been recognised by the Polish state nice to know.

No, but as said - today it is pretty easy to get Polish cintziship. Too easy in my opinion. So if for some reason she was not granted one there has to be a very good reason for it.

----Did you read this article yourself or you're trolling?
here quote:
Article 11. Loss of citizenship happens by: 1) obtaining another country's citizenship, 2) taking a public office or entering the service in a foreign country's army without proper governor's consent,


So if he lost citizenship for one of those reasons, he lost it for good.

Only the original Polish is binding. I haven't read the two to compare, but legal translations in Poland are generally terrible, so a lawyer may be strinting the OP along..... trying to convince the paying client there's a case when there isn't.

And I did refer you to qualification that followed those two points in Article 11 of the 1920 Polish Citizenship Law:
"Persons who are obligated to active military service can obtain a foreign citizenship in no other way than after obtaining an obligation release from Ministry of Military Affairs, otherwise, in view of The Polish State, they will be still considered Polish citizens."

Are you going to address that exception, which is known as the "military paradox rule"? Why should anyone take your opinion over a practicing lawyer in Warsaw who specializes in these cases? Poland has never been a common law jurisdiction. The legal code is intended to cover all contingencies. In this case, it is clear that it was impossible to change citizenship by any means, including joining a foreign military until AFTER compulsory military service in Poland had been completed, or excused. Full Stop, eh? The question is why that statute is not being enforced as written for the relevant time period.

@mafketis
I've posted links to translations from two different Polish lawyers that are essentially the same. I've requested that if someone has a different interpretation with a different meaning to post it. So far, no takers.

I don't have an economic interest in keeping you paying?

He isn't a member of any bar association in Poland.


That's something apparently dreamed up to part the gullible from their money. Wisniewski charges fees upfront and then says there are unexpected problems. What Polish authorities actually do is strip people of their citizenship if they have failed to complete their service obligations by the age of 50 and date that stripping back to the time at which the foreign citizenship was acquired.

And the other shoe drops. It's the nigerian scam (with the added benefit that the victims come to him....) what a vile piece of garbage he must be.

It occurs to me that it would be massively useful if this forum had a 'fraudster" registry (not so named of course) to warn people of scamsters....

Just to note that I have cited two sources for the translation. Is someone seriously suggesting that Michał Wiśniewski, Piotr Cybula, Doktor Grzegorz Bajorek are not lawyers in Warsaw dealing with citizenship laws? They have the same translation absent the analysis. I've stated from the start the anyone experiencing this problem needs a lawyer not an agent. If Wisniewski isn't a lawyer people need to be warned. I am still interested in someone providing an alternate translation of Article 11, since it suggests that the present governments policies are in line with the communists, and not those of the Second Polish Republic.

The commies were big on declaring people non-citizens, but the statutory law from the communist period that permitted that for draft dodging still required an actual adjudication that citizenship was revoked. If such records exist in the archives, they need to be produced by the Polish government so the matter can be addressed and corrected by the Polish government and/or the Polish president so that citizenship is restored. In practice, I very much doubt that they went about revoking the citizenship of all of those Poles in exile. With all of the destruction and chaos of the war, border shifts and "population transfers", they couldn't know all who were abroad, and then why would they care to go to the trouble since they were happy that they left, as during the time of the partitions. However, that is not the issue stated here by the OP. Issues from the 1920 Polish Citizenship Law remain the interpretation of Article 11, and the presumption that all of those who left Poland somehow lost citizenship even if they never served in a foreign military.

At present I am not paying anyone, nor am I touting for anyone. I just cited published examples on the web of the translation.


Perhaps, but who is the real scammer? Lawyers are said to "practice" law, since the actual application of the law frequently doesn't work as designed due to "public policy" considerations. If the translations of the 1920 Polish Citizenship Acts are correct, then it appears that it is the Polish government which is simply ignoring the original law and the intent of the Second Polish Republic for its own political reasons. In that case it is not quite fraud for an agent in Poland to request compliance with the actual published law, but plainly it is a trap for the unwary. It's all the more reason that the Polish government needs to clean this up.