Polish Roots Check

How the checker decides

The checker is a fixed set of rules, not a chatbot. Every answer you give is checked against the rules below, in this order. Your answers are logged anonymously (no name, no e-mail) so we can improve the checker; your e-mail is stored only if you ask us to send you the result (see Privacy).

What Polish law asks

Polish citizenship by descent is not granted; it is confirmed (art. 55 of the Polish Citizenship Act of 2 April 2009). The question is whether citizenship passed, unbroken, from a Polish ancestor to you. Each generation is judged under the law in force at that person's birth or at the event that might have ended citizenship:

The rules, in order

  1. The ancestor must have become a Polish citizen in 1920–22. That required living in, or being registered in a commune of, interwar Poland on 31 January 1920 (or when the region joined, 1920–22) and holding no other citizenship (1920 Act, art. 2). Towns that stayed German (e.g., Breslau/Wrocław, Stettin, East Prussia) or in the Free City of Danzig are a break. Emigrants who left before 1920 are a review point, not an automatic break: Galicians with a right of domicile (prawo przynależności) and people entered in the population books of the Kingdom of Poland could still become Polish (NSA II OSK 172/07). Anyone who held another citizenship before 1920 never became Polish.
  2. Born abroad before 1920 = never Polish (NSA II OSK 1176/16): a child born abroad before 1920 with that country's citizenship from birth did not become Polish.
  3. Naturalisation before 19 January 1951 ended Polish citizenship (1920 Act, art. 11), with a statutory exception for men still liable to Polish military service (ages 17–50 until September 1938, 17–60 from then until May 1950). The exception only postponed the loss to the end of that liability: men born up to 1887 lost it at 50, men born 1888–89 at 60, men born 1890–1900 on 29 May 1950 (NSA II OSK 2052/13, II OSK 50/10); men born from 1901 never lost it this way. Naturalisation from 19 January 1951 does not end citizenship unless Polish permission was obtained.
  4. A father's loss extended to his wife and children under 18 (1920 Act, art. 13; NSA II OSK 1852/09). A mother's loss did not extend to her children.
  5. Before 19 January 1951 citizenship passed through the father for children born in wedlock, and through the mother for children born outside marriage unless the father acknowledged the child before 18 (1920 Act, arts. 4–6). For a Polish mother's child born in wedlock, the check must be run on the father's line.
  6. Women who married a foreign citizen before 19 January 1951 lost Polish citizenship if the marriage gave them his citizenship automatically: in the US until 22 September 1922, Canada until 1 January 1947, the UK until 1 January 1949, Australia until 26 January 1949; never in Argentina or Brazil. Marriage that gave foreign citizenship before 1920 means she was never Polish.
  7. Daughters who got a foreign citizenship as children through a parent's naturalisation lost Polish citizenship at 18 if that was before 1951 (NSA II OSK 1648/19); not if the foreign citizenship came from birth (NSA II OSK 2095/21).
  8. Foreign military service before 19 January 1951 could end citizenship and is a review point; service in Allied forces in World War II is generally not treated as a break.
  9. 1951 Act, art. 4: Polish citizens living abroad on 19 January 1951 of Ukrainian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Russian, Latvian, Estonian or German nationality were not kept as Polish citizens.
  10. Children born from 19 January 1951 to 20 August 1962 to one Polish and one foreign parent abroad became Polish only where the other country did the same (1951 Act, art. 9): review point. From the 1962 Act onwards one Polish parent is enough (parents could opt for a foreign citizenship by declaration).
  11. After 1950 citizenship could also end with Polish permission or by an official decision (including one-way travel documents for emigration to Israel in 1958–84, often challenged successfully): review point.
  12. Same-year events (a loss and a birth in the same year, events in early 1951 or around the US 1922 and Australian 1949 changes) are review points: the exact dates decide.

Results: "Likely eligible" = no rule triggered; "Possibly eligible" = only review points; "Unlikely on this line" = at least one break. Every grandparent and great-grandparent is a separate line, so an "unlikely" line does not rule out the others.

Limits

The checker cannot see your documents, and documents decide cases: dates, places and names must match across records. It asks only broadly about deprivation decisions and permission-based loss, and it does not cover cases already refused. It is general information, not legal advice.