Poland, Jewish Holocaust Survivors Registered in Warsaw, 1945-1946 (USHMM)

This database contains more than 31,000 registration cards completed by Jewish survivors in Warsaw after the war, in order to register with the Central Committee of Polish Jews (Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce). While the cards themselves were compiled in Warsaw, only 15,270 individuals have Warsaw listed as their postwar residence. The original documents are held by the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland.

Historical Context

Warsaw was a major center of Jewish life and culture in Poland before World War II. The city’s prewar Jewish population of more than 350,000 constituted 30 percent of the city’s total population. The Warsaw Jewish community was the largest in Europe.

German troops entered Warsaw on September 29, 1939. The Jewish ghetto was established on October 12, 1940 and was sealed off from the rest of the city in November. The 400,000 inhabitants of the ghetto lived in an area of 1.3 square miles. Deportations from the ghetto began in July, 1942. By July 1943, approximately 305,000 Jews had been deported to various forced-labor camps and the Treblinka killing center.

On April 19, 1943, German forces arrived outside the ghetto, intending to liquidate the remaining Jewish inhabitants. This marked the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. By May 16, 1943, the uprising was crushed and the ghetto was in ruins. Approximately 7,000 Jews died during the uprising and around 49,000 Jews were deported. Perhaps as many as 20,000 Jews continued to live in hiding on the Aryan side of Warsaw after the liquidation of the ghetto.

Warsaw was liberated by Soviet forces on January 17, 1945. There were only about 174,000 people left in the city, less than six percent of the prewar population. Approximately 11,500 of these survivors were Jews.

The Central Committee of Polish Jews (Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce - CKŻP) was established as a state-sponsored political representation of Jews in Poland at the end of World War II on November 12, 1944. It provided care and assistance to Jews who survived the Holocaust and represented all CKŻP registered Polish Jews in dealing the Polish government. By January, 1946, CKŻP registered 86,000 survivors from across Poland. At the end of the summer, the number of registrants was around 205,000. CKŻP also assisted refugees from the Soviet Union who were able to come to Poland thanks to the Polish-Soviet repatriation agreement.

What's in the Records

Details vary widely by form, but details in this index may include the following:

• name
• birth date
• birthplace
• residence date
• pre war address
• war address
• post war address
• occupation
• parent's names

Ordering Records

Additional details about these victims may be included in the original records. While the index is freely accessible from Ancestry.com, the images of these records are not available in this database. Copies of the images can be ordered at no cost from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Click here for ordering information.

Details in the entries will vary depending on what information was provided on the original card.

More information about Jews in Kraków during the Holocaust is available in the online Holocaust Encyclopedia.