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The following resources may be of interest to researchers of Danzig Jewish genealogy. Please notify the Research Director of additional resources. If you have personally used a resource, we would also welcome your comments to be displayed here. The JewishGen Danzig/Gdańsk Research Division is not responsible for the content of external websites, nor should the appearance of links here be construed as endorsements by the Research Division.
Locations of Records For vital records and censuses, both from the Jewish communities and civil authorities, see our chart. Online Searchable Records As records from our indexing projects are made searchable online, links and other details will be provided here. For more information about the records included in JewishGen's Germany and Poland Databases, see the introduction to the Danzig Database.
Online Non-Searchable Records Online images of Danzig records that are not searchable, or not fully searchable, meaning that finding records of interest could be difficult:
Finding Other Danzig Researchers You can search the JewishGen Family Finder (JGFF) for Danzig surnames being researched by others (to find all surnames being researched from Danzig, search by "Town Is Exactly Gdansk"). If you have not added your surnames to the JGFF, you should do so. You can also search for Danzig surnames (search by both "Danzig" and "Gdansk") at the Family Tree of the Jewish People, and publish your GEDCOM-format family trees there. Archives
The Archives of the Jewish Community of Danzig: Thousands of files covering the Danzig Jewish Community, its precursor communities of Altschottland, Langfuhr, Mattenbuden, Weinberg, and Danzig in der Breitgasse, and Tiegenhof/Nowy Dwór Gdański, some as far back as 1720, were shipped out of Danzig in 1939 and are now kept at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP) in Jerusalem. A very detailed inventory is available online (PDF). Follow the links within the inventory for additional details. Many of the items' descriptions suggest they contain significant genealogical information, but the precise extent of the genealogical content of the Archives is unknown. Included are documents in at least German and Hebrew.
The CAHJP also contains microfilms of files at the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin (1869-1938), and microfilms, documents, and inventories of files from the Polish State Archives in Gdańsk (source). The genealogical content of this material is unknown.
Fundraising is underway for a Research Division project to extract genealogical information from this material, which you can read about here and contribute to here. The Family History Library (FHL) of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) has microfilmed Danzig Jewish vital records (birth, marriage, death), burial records, burial plot purchase records, an 1814 surname adoption list, and a (possible) citizenship list. Details can be found here and here, and a list of the contents of individual microfilms by clicking on the "View Film Notes" buttons on these pages.
JRI-Poland also describes LDS Danzig microfilms and some birth, marriage, death record holdings of the Polish State Archives in Gdańsk. Additional holdings of the latter — immigration files, Holocaust-era files, Kahal files, police files, tax and occupation lists, and local government files — are also described by the Routes to Roots Foundation (click "Archive Database," then "Search Database," then type "Gdansk" and click the "Search" button), where it is also stated that the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw has Danzig Holocaust-era files and Polish Aliyah Passports to Palestine. For more information about Polish Aliyah Passports, see JRI-Poland's Polish Aliyah Passports project website.
This material is now the subject of a Research Division project, which you can read about and volunteer for here. The project description includes a more accurate assessment of the contents of some of the microfilms. The Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin-Dahlem has documents about Danzig Jews in the 18th and 19th century with very significant genealogical information. Some of the documents have been acquired, but not all. If you might be willing to perform research in Berlin, please contact us. The Routes to Roots Foundation also indicates that the Central Archive for Genealogy (Zentralstelle fuer Genealogie) in Leipzig contains births records from Nowy Dwór Gdański (Tiegenhof) for 1855-1889. These were, apparently, microfilmed by LDS and are available from the FHL — details can be found here (click "View Film Notes" for more). The Leo Baeck Institute has in its online catalog many items pertaining to Danzig — family trees including people from Danzig or with the surname Danzig, items from the Danzig Jewish Community, items from former Danzigers. We would appreciate information about the genealogical content of this material. Publications For a list of books concerning Danzig Jewry, click here. An English translation of the Gdańsk chapter of Yad Vashem's Pinkas HaKehillot Polin, vol. VI is available online. "Danzig Jewry: A Short History", by Gershon C. Bacon, is a brief online history. See also the Jewish Encyclopedia entry for an historical overview and a partial list of rabbis. A small list of Jewish soldiers from Danzig who fought for Germany in World War I can be found here. Scroll down to Die Jüdischen Gefallenen des Deutschen Heeres, der Deutschen Marine und der Deutschen Schutztruppen, then download file S190-213.zip listed below. In this compressed file is the image file 2-0046.tif, which contains the Danzig entries. (Hopefully, we will receive permission to extract this information.) The Aufbau Indexing Project has made searchable thousands of announcements of births, engagements, marriages, deaths, and other events from the pages of Aufbau. You can find many Danzigers by following the "Search the Database" link and then searching by "German Origin" of Danzig (at the bottom). Holocaust Documentation Search the JewishGen Holocaust Database and the Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names at Yad Vashem. Survivors can also be registered in the Registry of Holocaust Survivors at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Directories Business, address, and telephone directories can also provide useful genealogical information, and many covering Danzig have been digitized and are available online. At genealogyindexer.org you can search online Danzig directories for 1836-1942 plus many directories with larger geographic coverage including Danzig. To complement these directories, there is a list of Danzig street names in both German and Polish. Photographs Photographs of Danzig and Danzig Jewish life can be found at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the YIVO Institute's People of A Thousand Towns Online Photo Catalog. Some of the people appearing in these photographs are identified in the captions. |