Documents

Documents are an essential asset if you want to get your Polish Citizenship. You should be prepared to dig into your Polish genealogy to prove you have Polish ancestors and recreate your line of descent. Let us share our experience with you!

Documents are so important because of the nationality law in Poland is based in the right of blood (jus sanguinis – you can read more about it here). It works in your favor, because even though you weren’t born in Poland, you are technically speaking still a citizen, you only need to certify it – all thanks to the Polish blood that runs in your veins. There are a few issues that can influence it, therefore we always recommend doing a free eligibility test. However, this guide will provide you with all the information that you need.

For your convenience we have gathered the documents in three groups, as each group has different purposes in the procedure. Also, if we’d put it all in one article, you’d be reading it for hours! Each document will have it’s Polish translation and a photo to facilitate recognition.

Polish ID from 1920s

We have grouped the documents in the following manner:

1. Documents proving Polish descent – an essential category that is needed to think about starting the procedure, or to put things simple, to prove that your ancestors were Polish. To learn more read
2. Documents proving kinship – we need to recreate your family ties as not every family tree makes it possible for you to get your Polish Citizenship. Vital records play a pivotal role in that aspect. To learn more read
3. Auxilary documents –  In our practice we have seen tons of Polish documents. Some of them are of no use for the procedure, but there are also gems that can be gamechangers. We try to cover the most important from our point of view, those who can provide needed information.
4. EU Polish Citizenship for British citizens of Polish descent –  British of Polish origin have a few unique documents that they can use in the procedure, you can read about them in this article.

What if you are missing some of the documents or haven’t got any? Don’t panic 🙂 There are ways to find them!

Polish documents search

Let’s be frank, not all of us are fortunate enough to have all the documents, gathered for the last three generations, only waiting to be used in the procedure. In fact, some of the ancestors of our clients had to either flee their homes, or were post-war emigrants, or had their history just  a bit more complicated than the average. Nevertheless, if you know basic data about your family, we can start a documents search. Finding polish documents can be effortless with Lexmotion.

Poland doesn’t have it’s archives centralised, so the work we do to sort out the documents issue makes us feel as XXI century Sherlock Holmes. Where do we search?

• civil repositories
• regional archives
• church archives
• military

We don’t have to go through all of them every single time. It requires some skill and experience, however in the end it really pays off in most of cases.

We hope that we gave you good summary of all the elements of the puzlle “documents needed to get your Polish Citizenship”.

Remeber to extend your knowledge about Documents proving Polish descent, Documents proving kinship, Auxilary documents, and Documents unique to British of Polish origin.

Remember that we can check your documents for you out of charge during our free eligibility check.