Discovering & Understanding Family Registration Cards

In 1928, each Polish town was obliged by law to register all domiciles. This was done using Family Registration Cards (FRCs). These cards were later used by the Germans and then by the new administration in the first years after World War ll. Many cards survived in state archives and local museums. To study their value, Dr. Klauzinska extracted and analyzed more than 6,500 FRCs of Jews from her hometown of Zduńska Wola. She will share her analysis and findings such as the community’s pre-war size, range of professions, population structure and dynamics.

Knowing the German occupation forces used these cards, Dr. Klauzinska was also able to examine them for what they reveal about Jewish life during the war in the ghetto. Based on her research, Dr. Klauzinska will provide recommendations for JRI-Poland’s members wishing to study FRC data from ancestral towns throughout Poland.

This is a members only event, for JRI-Poland users who have contributed $54 annually for this specific purpose. Please join us as a JRI-Poland member by using the MY PROFILE option on the drop down menu when hovering over the “HELLO” blurb on any JRI-Poland webpage.

Kamila Klauzinska has a PhD from the Department of Jewish Studies, the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Her PhD dissertation focused on Modern Jewish genealogy for which she was awarded a research prize from the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy. Her M.A. thesis focused on the Jewish cemetery in Zdunska Wola. Dr. Klauzinska was a Visiting Scholar in a number of prominent institutions, including the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA (2011).  In 2010 she was awarded the Bronze Medal For Merits to Culture “Gloria Artis” by the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage.