Late Registration of Births

If you know in what year and in what town a family member was born, but are unable to find the birth record, consider the possibility that the birth was registered in a later year. Delayed registrations were very common, and all sorts of reasons were listed: for example, the father was sick or was “negligent,” or “Lateness caused by war,” or perhaps no reason was given.

If you see several late birth registrations for the children of a single couple, all registered on the same day, this may indicate that the family was getting ready to leave town or leave Poland, and perhaps wanted to make sure to get copies of birth records before doing so.

Due to Polish privacy laws, the Polish State Archives does not make accessible (on the web or in-person in the archives) birth records registered more recently than 100 years ago. Let’s say the birth occurred in 1920 but was not registered until 1940. Check the 1920 index pages and you may find the name, year of late registration, and birth number listed alphabetically, but inserted between rows. Here is an example:

Late registrations also appear in death records, most often during the late 1940s and early 1950s, in the case of a person declared to have died during the Holocaust era. It was common for the person’s name to be added to the index records for the year during which he/she was declared to have died.

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