* * * * * * * * * G E N     D O B R Y ! * * * * * * * * *

Volume V, No. 4. 30 April 2004.
Copyright (c) 2004, PolishRoots(R), Inc.
Editor: William F. Fred Hoffman, E-mail: <wfh@langline.com>

***************************************

CONTENTS

   Welcome
   Polish Casualties in the Austrian Legions - 1914 to April 1915
   Letters to the Editor
   _Gen Dobry!_ in PDF Form
   Armorials for Sale
   Sending Money to Poland
   Polish Trivia Questions
   Upcoming Events
   More Useful Web Addresses
   You May Reprint Articles...

***************************************

*** WELCOME! ***

to the latest issue of _Gen Dobry!_, the e-zine of PolishRoots(R). If you missed previous issues, you can find them here:

   http://polishroots.org/gendobry/gendobry_index.htm

PolishRoots is always adding features, and you're missing a bet if you don't check on the latest developments. One feature with lots of new additions is the page for translations from the 15-volume, 19th-century Polish gazetteer _Slownik geograficzny Krolestwa Polskiego_. A number of volunteers are helping translate entries, so more are being added constantly. Also, Paul Valasek suggested adding to specific entries the names of researchers studying that particular place. Of course, this would only be done with the permission of the people involved. If you'd like to see a sample of how it might work, take a look at this page:

   http://www.polishroots.org/slownik/wislowiec.htm

Also, if you are among those who'd like _Gen Dobry!_ in PDF form, you can download this issue here:

   http://www.polishroots.org/gendobry/PDF/GenDobry_V_4.pdf

***************************************

*** POLISH CASUALTIES IN THE AUSTRIAN LEGIONS - 1914 TO APRIL 1915 ***

by Paul S. Valasek <paval56@aol.com>

Many researchers of Slavic descent will sooner or later discover that their families served in armies not of their national association. In Poland, World War I pitted brother against brother against brother, as Poles were drafted, conscripted, and simply taken into one of the dominant occupying armies, Germany/Prussia, Austria, or Russia. For more than 8 years fighting took place on Polish soil as old regimes and dynasties were falling, new governments were forming, and -- most importantly -- new borders were being drawn up. The map of Europe prior to 1914 was totally changed after 1918, and further "refined" through 1923.

Most American, Canadian, English and French families acknowledge the end of World War I with the Armistice of November 11, 1918. That simply called a truce in the West; in the East the battles raged on, often with new names, new wars, until well into the 1920s. These wars are important to Polish researchers, as this was the time Poland was reestablishing itself on the map and trying to regain much of the land it had lost when finally dismembered under the Third Partition of 1795.

There is a database new to PolishRoots(R) at this address:

  http://www.polishroots.org/databases/galician%20casualty%20list.htm

It is a first-time listing for casualties of the Austrian Armies from the start of the war, August 1914 through April 1915. The booklet from which this data was taken is entitled _List of Sick, Wounded, Killed, and Missing Legionnaires up to April 1915_. It was printed by the Central Records and Recruitment Section of the Military Supreme National Committee, and was recently discovered in a private collection in Poland. Judging by the small number of casualties (4,584), I feel it has many restrictions on the names, as viewing articles on the Web indicates that Austrian casualties numbered well over 90,000 - 100,000 by this time. Unfortunately, there is no introduction to this source which would explain how it was composed and what the limitations of inclusion were.

The listing of individuals, though very important, has its limitations. Most entries will give a surname, first name, regiment, company and sometimes battalion or squadron. Next is usually the type of unit where the man was fighting, i.e., artillery, cavalry, infantry, riflemen. After this comes the status of the soldier: whether wounded, ill, killed, died, or missing. I do not recall seeing any entries which listed captured as a choice, nor were any women's names listed. Following this is a date of the incident and a location. If killed, missing or dead, sometimes wounded, it will list the name of the town, or battle where the casualty occurred. If sick or wounded, it may list the hospital where the soldier was taken. All of these factors are important for follow-up research. The vast majority of names appear to be Polish, but there are significant smaller numbers of Jewish, German and Hungarian names listed.

Unfortunately, there are some severe limitations of this list. These are important to note:

1. There are NO hometowns listed or place of birth.
2. There are NO family members or next of kin mentioned.
3. There are NO ages given.
4. There are NO nationalities, religions, or races given.
5. There are NO listings of cemeteries or whether the soldier returned to service or was sent home.
6. There are NO serial numbers or army numbers given.

Be that as it may, if you have an ancestor who would have been of military age in 1914 (a rough approximation would be age 18-35, born 1879 through 1896), and he was from the Austrian partition of Poland, and would have been eligible for military service, you need to take a look at the list of names. If you have a relative who suddenly "disappears" after 1914, assume he was in the war and may have been wounded or killed. Of course, in 1914-15, no one bothered to bring home an ordinary soldier's body to his hometown. Many were buried near the battlefields they fought in, near the hospitals they died in, or in many cases, on the spot during the battle and marked with a temporary marker, only to be lost years later. (A number of years ago, while driving through Poland with a Polish-born friend, we passed many forests in central Poland, and she mentioned something that stuck in my head. Her comment, "All Polish forests have bodies in them," was chilling, but most likely true. Since the Middle Ages, Poland has seen too many battles and extremely high numbers of casualties. So a statement of this sort cannot be taken lightly).

What is interesting in this list are the hospitals where men were taken. Many went to hospitals in Vienna, hundreds of miles from the fighting; others went to hospitals in what was officially Hungary, meaning Budapest was a likely stop. But they were also sent to hospitals in areas now in Slovakia, as this province was officially under Hungarian domination and was just south of the Polish border. If a family member was treated, and maybe even died of his wounds, a thousand miles from a battle and possibly two countries over from his home town -- that's the kind of case where this database may be of great importance.

The Family History Centers have filmed much of the Military Archive in Vienna. Unfortunately, I have heard of very limited success stories coming out of this huge resource. The reasons are that when looking for an enlisted man, or noncommissioned officer (and most Slavs will fit into these two categories), one needs to know the regiment, battalion and company in which he served to locate the recruit's enlistment records. The great problem is that this is exactly the information we are searching for ourselves. So it's a vicious cycle of "What I need is what I need to get what I need"!

If anyone reading this has had success in finding any Pole, Czech or Slovak serving in the Austrian army in World War I, please let us know how you did it and what films the records are located. Others willing to help Polish genealogy may want to database these films for future researchers.

The one helpful fact is that many of these names are not very common. Of course there are the Nowaks, Malinowskis, and Kwasniewskis; but we run into plenty of names such as Dziug, Grebr, Lawara, and Manuczynski.

If you find a possible match, copies of the listing and explanation of the details are available for a small fee. This fee goes to purchase similar materials which will soon appear on PolishRoots(R).

To share additional information, or request a listing, please send e-mails to Paul Valasek at <paval56@aol.com>. If you have success and make a definite match, we encourage you to write about it for _Gen Dobry!_.

Finally, here are some related sites to look at for generalized history of the Battle for Galicia, 1914-1915:

   http://www.zum.de/whkmla/region/eceurope/polwwi.html
   http://www.richthofen.com/ww1sum2/

***************************************

*** LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ***

Subject: Genetics and Publications

   [Editor -- In a thread on the Poland-Roots mailing list, Dr. Malgorzata Nowaczyk, who goes by "Marg," saw some notes on this subject she wished to comment on. I feel these comments are worth sharing with _Gen Dobry!_ readers.]

As you know, I do not read Poland-Roots regularly, so it was only today that I saw the thread "Genetic diseases in SE Poland".  I have a couple of comments about this that you may wish to post.

I would like to introduce myself first. I am a pediatrician and a clinical geneticist who has a lot of experience (about 15 years) with genetic and neurodegenerative disorders such as NPD-C (that includes research and looking after children and families with these conditions). I am very sorry about the losses mentioned -- I have seen families go through this awfulness too many times.

However, I would like to caution anybody from labeling any disease as ethnic, as in most instances they are not. Only a few conditions are found in so-called ethnic or geographically separated populations in the world, and that is for reasons for not marrying outside of their particular group. These include the Ashkenazi Jewish population (religious reasons), the French-Canadian population of the Lac St Jean region of Quebec (religious reasons and geographical) or the Portuguese from the Azores (geographical) -- to name just a few. And in these populations only specific diseases are increased.

I do not know what particular research the people mentioned are conducting, but it is important to remember that from the point of view of population, southeastern Poland was quite diverse, including Jews, Poles, Rusyns, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Tatars, etc.

The conditions mentioned in the previous posts (NPD-C and factor V Leiden) are not specific to Poles, although NPD-C has been found in a small genetic isolate of French-Canadians in Nova Scotia.

I am taking the time to write about this in detail because I do not wish the members of the list to think that there is anything particularly unusual about Poles from any part of Poland. In fact Poles, or rather people from the Republic of Poland, are as genetically diverse as only 4 centuries of wars and population migrations can make them!  As far as genetic diseases are concerned, it is known from population genetic studies that people from around the world carry mutations for genetic diseases -- every one of us has about 14-18 such genes. No ethnic group or nationality is excluded. So we are all the same in this.

   Marg Nowaczyk <Nowaczyk@HHSC.CA>

   [Editor -- I think these are valuable comments. As we focus on specific areas of most interest to us, we don't want to develop tunnel vision. Many of us have excellent reasons to focus on genetic factors in a specific area, and that's certainly a valuable aspect of research, as long as we don't lose all objectivity. Our ancestors are special and unique in our hearts; but even as we concentrate on them, let's keep the big picture in mind, too.]

-----

Subject: Place Names and (Horrors!) Grammar

Look forward to getting _Gen Dobry!_ and especially enjoyed the endings tutorial. Usually I can recognize the genitives but am a real dunce on the prepositionals, so expect I'll be rereading this column regularly.

Occurs to me that something that might be helpful to people who are reading Polish place names on American records is a piece on phonemic errors. These are the source of "misspellings" generated by U.S.-born children or immigrants stating the name (sometimes with the proper Polish endings!). Misspellings are not random but generated by how the untrained ear of a non-native speaker hears the sounds. The "mistakes" they make are probably predictable to some extent.  

For example, Polish W might be spelled V, or F. Figuring out that Wiktoria might be Victoria is a no-brainer; but people might not think about it for place names. If they see something that says Forogu for a birth place on a death or marriage certificate, it might not occur to them to try to find either Foroga or Woroga on the map.

So, in your "spare time," dear editor, how about some sort of a table that could list the various ways Polish letters might be "spelled" by English speakers?

   Margaret Sullivan <hjmcs@optonline.net>

   [Editor -- Thanks to you and all who wrote to say how much they enjoyed that article! Thanks also to Tina Ellis for suggesting I write it.
   [As for spelling variation of place names, I will give this some thought. The practical problem is that the phonetic and orthographic considerations involved can get pretty complex. My biggest problem in writing the "Place Names" article was how to take such a complicated subject and simplify it to the point that it would be helpful, without being TOO simple. An article on spelling variations presents the same problem. When dealing with something like this, it takes a lot of work to be simple!
   [But I will see if I can write something on this subject. In the meantime, there exists a pretty good aid to dealing with these variations -- the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex System. It was developed by outstanding Jewish researchers Randy Daitch and Gary Mokotoff to help researchers deal with the bewildering variety of name spellings we encounter. For more see this site: http://www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/soundex.html.
   [For dealing with place names, a particularly valuable tool using the DM Soundex is the ShtetlSeeker, located here: http://www.jewishgen.org/shtetlseeker/loctown.htm. So while you're waiting for me to write a fabulously perceptive article on this subject, you can do yourself a little good using this Soundex for all it's worth -- which is quite a bit.]

-----

Subject: HR 525

   [Editor -- In the last issue we mentioned problems associated with House Resolution 525. One of our faithful readers had this comment].

Re the article in recent _Gen Dobry!_, I went to http://www.google.com to check out what specifically HR525 said. I typed in "House Resolution 525" and what came up surprised me. HR 525 was introduced on September 10, 1998 by Mr. Solomon and it referred in part to the impeachment of the President of the United States. So I googled Nancy Johnson and was taken to her home page, and there I was able to print out her introduction of the resolution urging Poland be added to the Visa Waiver List. But no number was given. When I checked out her legislation list, there was her bill listed as HR 525. So I don't know how they number the bills, if it is done on a yearly basis or by congressional session, but I must admit that I was a little taken aback to see HR 525 listed as an impeachment of the President of the United States. 

By visiting Nancy Johnson's homepage, I was able to put in my zip code, get the e-mail address of my congressman, and immediately e-mail him my desire to have the Honorable Nancy Johnson's bill passed with his help.

I also e-mailed my congressman to not require fingerprinting of Polish visitors arriving at US airports as Poland had sided with us in the Iraqi war. France and Germany did not and yet they were not required to be fingerprinted upon arrival at our airports. Both France and Germany have large Muslim populations also and Poland does not.

   Armela Hammes <armelahammes@att.net>

   [Editor -- I might be wrong, but I think they start renumbering bills with each new session of Congress. So HR525 could be one thing one year, something completely different the next. Fortunately, you figured out how to find what you needed. And I'm very glad you let your congressman know how you feel about the way Poles are being treated. If I were a Pole these days, I'd be asking myself why America treats its friends this way, especially at a time when we need friends like the Poles more than ever!]

***************************************

*** _GEN DOBRY!_ IN PDF FORM ***

Thanks to all those who wrote to let us know how they felt about the option of receiving _Gen Dobry!_ as an Adobe Acrobat pdf file. While many were enthusiastically in favor of the idea, a fair number made it clear they'd prefer to go on receiving it in plain old text format.

It's very little extra work to prepare it in both formats, and we want to make our readers happy. So we're planning to offer it both ways. As you can see, we're still sending out the text version to all subscribers. But if you want to download the PDF version, it's here:

   http://www.polishroots.org/gendobry/PDF/GenDobry_V_4.pdf

For future reference, both versions will always be available, along with all the other back issues, at this address:

   http://polishroots.org/gendobry/gendobry_index.htm

I hope this works for everyone, and thanks a lot for taking the time to let us know how you feel!

***************************************

*** ARMORIALS FOR SALE ***

Those of you familiar with my work on Polish names know I frequently refer to research by Prof. Kazimierz Rymut, one of the foremost experts on the subject. I'm honored to say I correspond with him and others at the Polish Language Institute PAN in Krakow.

Recently Prof. Rymut said he wants to raise money to put out versions of works such as his _Nazwiska Polakow_ on CD-ROM. He's realized that CD versions of reference works such as this can be much more extensive than printed versions, and are far less expensive to produce and ship. So he wants to put out expanded, more comprehensive versions of this and other works, but needs to come up with funding.

One way he hopes to do this is by selling some of the finer books from his personal library. Among them are copies of some of most important Polish armorials. He has copies of Paprocki's _Herby rycerstwa polskiego_ (1584); Niesiecki's _Herbarz polski_, Vol. I-X (1839-1849); Boniecki's _Herbarz polski_, Vol. I-XVI + Supplements (1899-1901); and Uruski's _Rodzina. Herbarz szlachty polskiej_, Vol. I-XVI (1904-1938). These are reprints of the originals, so it is legal to send them outside the country (old, original books of this sort are regarded as national treasures and cannot be sold abroad). He also has a complete set of all volumes published so far of _Polski slownik biograficzny_ (Vol. I-XLI).

He asked if I could spread word that he's willing to sell these books, and I promised to do so. If I had the money and any interest in Polish heraldry, I'd buy them myself. As it is, I would not hesitate to recommend him as an honest man who tries to live up to his word. When I've bought books from him, he always sent exactly what he described, and he did his best to keep the shipping costs down (they can be considerable!).

He has not set prices; they will be negotiable. If anyone is interested, you can write to him by snail mail here:

   prof. Kazimierz Rymut
   Instytut Jezyka Polskiego PAN
   al. Mickiewicza 31
   31-120 Kraków
   POLAND

You can also e-mail him c/o Urszula Bijak, an English-speaking associate at the Polish Language Institute PAN. Her address is urszulab@poczta.ijp-pan.krakow.pl.

I hope no one will feel it is inappropriate for me to mention this here. It seemed possible to me that there might be someone out there who'd love to get his or her hands on books of this sort. If that also helps Prof. Rymut give us more material to work with, so much the better!

***************************************

*** SENDING MONEY TO POLAND ***

Recently on the Poland-Roots mailing list there was an interesting thread on sending money to Poland. This subject keeps coming up in Polish genealogical circles, as researchers try to find ways to transfer funds. Personal checks and many kinds of money orders or wire transfers can take forever and can end up costing you or the payee in Poland more than the amount being transferred! So caution is necessary. If you'd like to read what others have tried and what they recommend, go to the Poland-Roots archive:

   http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/POLAND-ROOTS/

Click on "April 2004" and scroll down to the threads "Money to Poland," "Re: Money to Poland," "Money to Przemysl."

Personally, when dealing with individuals and amounts under $100, I send cash, unless they assure me they can handle checks without major problems. When dealing with organizations or companies I use credit cards if possible. If that's not possible, I ask them to tell me how they prefer to receive payment. I used PEKAO in the past and had very good experiences with them. In 2002 Pekao's U.S. affiliate was acquired by U.S. Money Express; I haven't had occasion to use their services yet, but I'm sure I'll give them a try someday. If you'd like to learn more, visit this page:

   http://www.usmoneyexpress.com/MONEY_TRANSFERS.ASP

***************************************

*** POLISH TRIVIA QUESTIONS ***

   [Editor: In the last issue we gave 5 questions from a Polish trivia game PolishRoots Vice President Paul Valasek <paval56@aol.com> came across. The answers to those questions appear below, followed by this month's questions, the answers to which will appear in the next issue. We want to thank Tom Bratkowski for permission to reprint these.]

ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS IN THE LAST ISSUE:

+ Traditions

  -- Q: By old Polish custom, what does the burying of the herring and the _z*ur_ or gruel signify?

     A: The end of Lent

+ Traditions

  -- Q: On what religious day are Polish children awakened by being tapped with sticks in memory of the wounds of Christ?

     A: On Good Friday

+ Traditions

  -- Q: By Polish tradition, who decorates the Easter eggs?

     A: Only the women folk

+ Traditions

  -- Q: By Polish custom, the devil can take the form of all but two animals; which two?

     A: The stork and the pigeon or dove.

+ Traditions

  -- Q: What animal is drowned symbolically after being led through an old Polish village on Easter Monday?

     A. The "Bear"

-----------------------------------------------------------

* QUESTIONS FOR THE APRIL 2004 ISSUE *

Geography

1. What river in southern Poland is popular for raft excursions?

2. What U.S. State has a Modjeska Canyon, Modjeska Mountain, and Modjeska Road?

3. Where is the largest Gothic castle in Poland?

4. What once largely Polish community was/is surrounded by Detroit, Michigan?

5. What major U.S. city had a Polish-American community known as Polish Hill?

-----------------------------------------------------------

Reprinted with permission from Polish American Trivia & Quadrivia, Powstan, Inc. If interested in learning more, contact Paul Valasek <paval56@aol.com>.

***************************************

*** UPCOMING EVENTS ***

[Note: the PolishRoots Events Calendar <http://www.polishroots.org/coming_events.htm> usually has more info than we have room for here. If you have an event coming up you want Polish genealogical researchers to know about, send as much info as possible to <Events@PolishRoot.org>.]

Saturday, May 22, 2004

The New England Chapter of the Carpatho-Rusyn Society
Sponsors  a Lecture by Professor Elaine Rusinko
on Rusyn Literature and Identity

2 p.m. at St. John's Church Auditorium, 346 Mill Hill Ave. Bridgeport CT. This will be her first appearance in the New England area.

The Carpatho-Rusyn Society is a non-profit organization headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania devoted to the study and dissemination of information about Rusyn ethnicity, history and culture, and has chapters in other areas of the United States. The homelands of the Rusyn people are now found in eastern Slovakia, northern Hungary and Rumania, southern Poland and western Ukraine. They are often referred to as Rusins, Rusnaks, Carpatho-Russians, Ruthenians, or Little Russians. However, the Rusyns never had their own country. The Society also maintains close ties with Rusyns in Europe and provides encouragement, humanitarian aid and relief to Rusyns living in the homelands.

For more information contact: Orestes J. Mihaly at (914) 273 9019, email okmihaly@yahoo.com. Info on upcoming events is available at http://www.c-rs.org/evnt.htm

==========

July 17 & 18, 2004

National Bohemian, Moravian, and Slovak Folk Dance Festival

at the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

For more info: 319-362-8500 or http://www.ncsml.org

==========

August 5-8, 2004

THE SOCIETY FOR GERMAN GENEALOGY IN EASTERN EUROPE

- 2004 CONVENTION -

Coast Plaza Hotel & Conference Center
1316 33rd Street NE
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Phone: 403-248-8888

Contact: convention@sggee.org
Web: http://www.sggee.org
Web: http://www.clickcalgaryhotels.com/coast_plaza_hotel_and_conference_center.html

SGGEE is a Poland and Volhynia genealogy group for people of German origin interested in the genealogy, culture and history of their ancestors who migrated through present-day Poland and Volhynia (now western Ukraine) and the surrounding areas.

Research opportunities, speakers and workshops will assist you in discovering your ancestral roots out of these areas. SGGEE reaches researchers not only in Canada but the U.S.A., Germany, Poland, Australia, and Russia.

More data will be available on the Website http://www.sggee.org as details are finalized.

==========

September 8 - 11, 2004

"LEGENDS LIVE FOREVER"
CONFERENCE SPONSORED BY THE FEDERATION OF GENEALOGICAL SOCIETIES

At the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas

There will be over 70 speakers, an exhibit hall, book sales, and so on. Debbie Greenlee <daveg@airmail.net>, who mentioned this conference in a note on the Poland-Roots mailing list, had an excellent suggestion: "You might even include a trip to Panna Maria for a day or so. Texas in September is still warm, no chance of snow!

For more details see the FGS Website:  http://www.fgs.org/2004conf/FGS-2004.htm

==========

September 17-18, 2004

POLISH GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY OF CONNECTICUT AND THE NORTHEAST

presents their 2004 Conference in affiliation with the

CENTRAL CONNECTICUT STATE UNIVERSITY POLISH STUDIES PROGRAM

More info will be given in the Spring issue of _Pathways & Passages_, and on the PGSCTNE Website at www.pgsctne.org.

!! ZAPRASZAMY !!

==========

September 24 - 26, 2004

POLISH FEST 2004

Latham, New York

A Celebration of Polish/American Culture

3 Days of fun and entertainment for the whole family

Located in Latham NY, a suburb of Albany.

http://www.polishfest-ny.org/

***************************************

*** MORE USEFUL WEB ADDRESSES ***

http://travel.state.gov/passport_records.html
   Arlene Gardner mentioned this site to Paul Valasek; she learned about it from the Milwaukee Computer Genealogy Group. It tells how to obtain copies of your passport records. We pass it on for anyone who might find it useful.
_____________________________

http://www.piastinstitute.org
  Maureen Morris <maureenm@sbcglobal.net> sent me a note with this URL, the Website of the Piast Institute.
_____________________________

http://www.italiangen.org/NYCDeathSearch.stm
   Recent issues of _Nu? What's New_, the free e-zine of Jewish genealogy, have included interesting articles. Vol. 5, No. 7 (http://www.avotaynu.com/nu13.htm) mentioned this site, where the Italian Genealogical Group has posted an index to New York City deaths from 1891 to 1911. Also, Vol. 5, No. 8 mentioned that the Bremen Germany Chamber of Commerce was making available emigration lists for that port city. The site is at http://db.genealogy.net/maus/gate/shiplists.cgi?lang=en. To read more about these items, visit the archives of _Nu_ at http://www.avotaynu.com/nu13.htm.
_____________________________

http://www.familyhistorynetwork.net/newsline/newsline.php
  The 15 April 2004 issue of Everton's _Newsline_ had two particularly good articles, "Acquiring Fluency in Reading Archaic English Documents" (which includes tips that can help with documents from other countries as well) and "Using U.S. Records to Determine Place of Origin in Germany." You can see this issue by going to the back-issue archive at the above address and specifying the date as April 15, 2004.
_____________________________

http://www.h-net.org/lists/
   On the Posen mailing list, Marge <cliokent@yahoo.com> posted a note to remind people of H-NET, a "set of discussion lists (operated out of Michigan State University) on the humanities and social sciences, though more are 'history and culture' lists than anything else. Though the majority (perhaps large majority) of subscribers probably are academics, anyone may subscribe and participate." While these are not genealogy lists, they can be a source of info that helps us "flesh out" the bare facts we learn from genealogical research.
_____________________________

http://www.beskid.com
   If you're fluent in French and would like to see a very attractive and informative site on Poland, take a look at this one! It has lots of interesting links, including one in English that allows you to search a database of Polish soldiers who died in World War II and are buried in France: http://www.beskid.com/base/indexgb.php.
______________________________

http://www.poland.pl/index.htm
   In a note on the Polish-Surnames mailing list, Nan <Nangelbuddy@aol.com> wrote: "Just clicking buttons, entering Rafalowski surname, I came up with this site. I searched at the top of the page, using the box- Polish Internet. My surname gave 18 results, some with phone numbers and email addresses. Kowallek gave 25 documents. I don't know the language, but perhaps we can all get something from this site."
______________________________

http://www.poczta-polska.pl/mw/index.html
   On the PolandBorderSurnames mailing list, Tina Ellis <vcellis@jps.net> posted URLs of sites with beautiful photos of Poland. The URL listed above is the home page, from which you can go to individual pages showing photos from different areas.
______________________________

http://members.rogers.com/demczykgenea/
   On the Poland-Roots mailing list, John Demczuk <demczykgenea@rogers.com> said he'd posted assistance with translating Polish and Russian birth records, as well as templates he's used when transcribing records from microfilm, and samples of record pages from 1786 Galicia. He added, "Feel free to download any material from this site that you may find useful."
______________________________

http://www.muzarp.poznan.pl/archweb/gazociag/contents.htm
   Also on the Poland-Roots list, Diana Grzelak Needham <carsonneedham@adelphia.net> told us about this site, "regarding the archaeological finds made while laying the natural gas pipeline across Poland. According to the author who explains how the company decided to handle the inevitable conflict between progress and preservation, they even established a museum to hold the artifacts found, in Szamotuly near Poznan. If you're traveling to that area and/or interested in the pre-history of Poland, you shouldn't miss this."
______________________________

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/benoc/mirrors/www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/
   On the mailing list Galicia_Poland-Ukraine@yahoogroups.com Jim Onyschuk <jodanji@aci.on.ca> said he came across this site, featuring photos from a woman named Elena who likes to ride her motorcycle through Chernobyl, a "town where one can ride with no stoplights, no police, no danger to hit some cage or some dog." There are a lot of photos, and they'll take forever to download if you don't have a high-speed connection; but if you do, take a look. The photos are disturbing and unforgettable.
______________________________

http://www.austro-hungarian-army.co.uk/
   Also on the Galicia_Poland-Ukraine list, Linda <lbellofatto@snet.net> recommended this site as a valuable source of info when trying to learn about the Austro-Hungarian military. She also mentioned the Austro-Hungarian-Military mailing list on Rootsweb: http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/other/Military/
AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN-MILITARY.html.
______________________________

http://www.jewishgen.org/jri-pl/bizdir/tableofcontents.htm
    Also on that same list, Eva Zuber <me_me@gazeta.pl> listed Polish Business Directories online. The one above is for 1929. Also available:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=gdc3&fileName=
scd0001_20020613002popage.db
   1923 Handlowa Ksiega Adresowa Polski i Gdanska [1923 Business Directory for Poland and Gdansk].

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=gdc3&fileName=
scd0001_20020611001wapage.db
   Warszawskie Telefony 1938-39 [Warsaw Telephone Book - White Pages - 1938-39].

http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/galicia1891.htm
   Galicia 1891 Business directory.

***************************************

YOU MAY REPRINT articles from _Gen Dobry!_, PROVIDED: (1) the reprint is used for non-commercial, educational purposes; and (2) the following notice appears at the end of the article: Written by [authors name, e-mail address, and URL, if given]. Previously published by _Gen Dobry!_, Vol. V, No. 4, 30 April 2004. PolishRoots(R): http://PolishRoots.org/.

***************************************
Copyright 2004, PolishRoots(R), Inc. All rights reserved.