Polish citizenship and Passport - Legal assistance

25/09/2018

Because of Brexit more and more British people seek to apply for a European passport.

If your parents, grandparents of great-grandparents were born in Poland, or they were Polish citizens, you may obtain it.

Our Law Office has been specialising in the process of acquiring Polish citizenship since 2009. For the period of 9 years, we have obtained more than 8000 polish citizenships for our clients.

If your ancestors came from Poland or had polish citizenship, please write an e-mail to us ([email protected]) briefly describing your family history.

19/10/2016

Polish by descent? Check if you qualify for Polish citizenship and the EUROPEAN PASSPORT through your POLISH ancestry.
http://www.cklawoffice.eu/application.html

We kindly ask you to carefully fill in the form in Polish or English with appropriate data; the fields marked with an asterisk are mandatory. If any fields are incorrectly filled out, the system will inform you about that and will request that you make the necessary corrections.

16/10/2016

International magazine "Sovereignman.com" recommended our advocate's office as most reliable office dealing with citizenship law in Poland.

https://www.sovereignman.com/lifestyle-design/five-places-you-could-obtain-citizenship-6359/

“Guess who is going to be officially confirmed as a Polish citizen next month? Yours truly! Now, it’s just matter of waiting to be assigned the Polish version of a social security number and pick up the physical passport. “

29/08/2014

Confirmation of Polish citizenship – the procedure and documents required

Canada, US and Australia were countries where thousands of polish emigrants came before and after II World War. Now millions of their descendants still live there. To obtain Polish passport, it is not enough to claim Polish roots of the family and declare when your ancestors (or the applicant themselves) left Poland. It is also not sufficient to present “any documents” – the whole procedure of obtaining confirmation of Polish citizenship is a much formalized procedure and only very specific evidence may be accepted as sufficient for the authorities to confirm that the applicant – as an emigrant from Poland or descendant of Polish emigrants, may be deemed a Polish citizen. For example, if someone left Poland between 1920 and 1939, the presented documents must be sufficient to confirm that the person they concern is a Polish citizen under the Polish Citizenship Act of 1920.

Such documents must be then enclosed to the application. Documents confirming possession of Polish citizenship are documents such as old Polish passport, Polish identity card, or Polish military card. Those documents constitute direct proof that their holder was a Polish citizen as they were issued to Polish citizens and contain the information that the holder is a citizen of the Republic of Poland. If you do not have such documents, you can also use other documents, for example, various kinds of administrative rolls, registers of real estates and their holders, documents confirming residence in the Republic of Poland, certificate of the place of issue and number of the Polish passport, and many others. Such documents are very rarely held by applicants. However, they may be found in appropriate national archives and in various kinds of institutions collecting documents concerning residents of Poland. National archives often hold collections of documents not just from the 20th century, but also older ones. Obviously, you have to know where to look and what to look for. Most important archives and institutions:

– vital records offices – keeping vital records such as birth certificates, marriage certificates, and death certificates. In general, they hold documents not older than 100 years, however, in many cases this limit is not observed and sometimes older documents may also be found there.

– national archives – collecting various types of registers and administrative documentation and property registers. They also keep vital records older than 100 years.

- Institute of National Remembrance – they keep complete collections of documents concerning all residents of Poland from the post-war period.

– Central Military Archives – they collect documents of persons serving in the Polish armed forces – detailed information about a given soldier, such unit number or base, is very useful to conduct effective searches.

– Jewish Historical Institute – institution holding documentation concerning Polish Jews, in majority documents that were completed as declarations submitted by individuals after the Second World War and of minor value from the point of view of confirmation of Polish citizenship due to their insignificant evidential power.

– Archives covering the territory beyond the Bug River – holding portion of birth records from the territory of former Eastern borderland, that is the area that before the war belonged to Poland, and then was annexed to the Soviet Union.
Those are just some of the places where you may search for documents of individuals and families that emigrated from Poland. You should remember that many additional factor are also important – document searches should be conducted in the archives and institutions in appropriate locations – also taking into account changes of administration unit boundaries and additional factors, such as storage of some documents in central archives.

People interested in obtaining Polish passport usually do not understand many nuances of the process. For example, standard Polish birth certificate is not a sufficient document to conclude that the person in the certificate is a citizen of Poland. Polish law is very different than the law of the US, Canada, Brazil or Argentina, where the fact of being born in the territory of a country grants the child its citizenship (the territorial rule). In Poland, the fact that you are born here – even if evidenced, is not sufficient to deem a given person a Polish citizen. That is why the procedure of document search must be conducted properly and with utmost care – the chance of finding other documents that may be used as evidence in the procedure of citizenship confirmation is very high only if a proper and thorough search is conducted.

If you are interested in obtaining Polish passport and you do not speak Polish and have no living relatives in Poland – organizing a search on your own may seem like an extremely difficult and complex venture. That is why in such cases it is worth to use assistance of CK Law Office – because our Office specializes in the procedure of confirmation of Polish citizenship and also document searches. We would like to stress again that such search, if documents are required for the procedure, must be performed in a very specific manner. Otherwise the applicant may provide to the administrative authority conducting the procedure many documents that will, however, turn out to be worthless due to no evidential power in the procedure. For example, someone may conduct thorough and comprehensive genealogical search and collect a lot of information concerning family history, but none of the documents will constitute from the legal point of view a document confirming possession of Polish citizenship by direct descendants.

Document search is one of the things we specialize in. Also, we conduct document searches not just in Poland, but also in the archives of neighbouring countries. You should remember that large parts of the territory previously belonging to Poland, today constitute a part of Belarus, Latvia, and Ukraine. Persons born in such areas, if they emigrated as Polish citizens, may also apply for Polish passport today.

We would like to stress the fact that we specialize in document searches in the territory of today's Ukraine. The highest numbers of emigrants from the territory of what is currently Ukraine, lived in the area of: Lviv, Lutsk, Rivne, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk (formerly Stanisławów). Apart from the Volhynia (the place of intense combat between Germans and Russians, and between Poles and Ukrainians during the so called Volhynia Massacre), chances for finding the right documents in such areas are very high. Even in the Volhynia area there are still good many documents preserved.

Specific information on the place of birth and residence of ancestors is very important for proper document search. Many families remember only the name of the larger city in the area of which the family used to reside, while the actual place of residence could have been some smaller town nearby. Such information should be provided in every detail, as its precision is a condition of positive search results.

To sum up, CK Law Office offers full range of legal services for people applying for Polish passport. You may apply for Polish passport if you already have appropriate documents in your possession or if your family comes from Poland and documents have to be still located. The number of generations between the applicant and their Polish ancestors does not matter here – however, we do not handle cases in which emigration took place before 1905. What's important – you do not have to speak Polish to apply for Polish citizenship, and obtaining Polish passport does not impose any obligations on you – no tax, military or any other obligations, and a Polish citizen is treated in the EU equally to the citizens of Germany, France, United Kingdom, and any other EU member state.

Initial assessment of your case is free – apart from presentation of documents confirming possession of Polish citizenship, we also have to establish if a given person did not lose it after emigration, therefore a number of details related to the jobs performed abroad, military service of the ancestors, and many others have to be investigated. During the procedure, we will help you obtain the rest of the required documentation, such as naturalization documents, military documents, and other documents required for quick processing and positive outcome.

27/08/2014

Search for polish documents in areas that now belong to Ukraine (Kresy Wschodnie).

Former Polish citizens and their descendants who have not lost Polish citizenship, can apply for having its confirmed and can receive their Polish passports. Searching for the ancestors’ documents, it its worthwhile to remember that as a result of World War II Poland’s borders moved considerably to the West and, consequently, a major part of the territory of pre-war Poland has now become part of present Ukraine, Belarus or Lithuania.

Let us focus at this point on the issue of the territories which belonged to Poland before the war and are not part of Ukraine. Of course majority of population were polish nationals – but except this group a lot of Polish Jews also lived on these territories. The Jewish population there concentrated in Lviv which was the region’s biggest city. The former capital of Galicia was inhabited by more than 130,000 Polish Jews which made Lviv Poland’s third biggest city (after Warsaw and Łódź) in terms of the Jewish population. Big Jewish populations were also found in Rivne, Stanislavov (now Ivano-Frankivsk), Tarnopol, Lutsk and Stryi. The “Jewish” history of Polish Eastern borderlands, however, is a thing of the past now. Most of Polish Jews who survived the Second World War left after 1945 – some to settle on the territories of Western Poland (Lower Silesia), and the others to emigrate to Israel, the US or South America. The remaining few left as a result of the anti-Semitic campaign in the USSR in 1948-1953.
Inhabitants of those areas, and their descendants, can still apply for Polish passport since they emigrated from Poland as Polish citizens. Importantly, the lack of Polish documents of their ancestors does not preclude the possibility of being granted Polish citizenship since the required documents might be located in Ukrainian regional and state archives.

The biggest problems finding the relevant documents are encountered in the areas of Volyn, near the city of Lutsk. During the war, the area saw intensive German-Soviet fighting and fights between local gangs of OUN/UPA Ukrainian nationalists and the Polish underground and Soviet partisans. However, more than 50% of the inhabitants’ records survived there. Quite a good situation, on the other hand, is noted in the region of Rivne, in Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk, where nearly complete documents have remained and once strict administrative requirements are met, the chances for locating the documents are quite high.

Polish passport may be claimed by persons whose ancestors emigrated from those territories in the 1920s and 1930s as well as those leaving after 1945. Interestingly, the repatriation campaign of 1955-1958 qualified also the last Jewish emigrants from Ukraine of 1950s and even occasionally in early 1960s to get their Polish passports.

The search for the records necessary for Polish citizenship is complex and bureaucratised though. It is to be remembered that pursuant to the Polish Citizenship Act of 1920, a Polish birth or marriage certificate is not sufficient to prove Polish citizenship. Clearly, the documents enabling effective conformation of Polish citizenship of an ancestor are old Polish passports, military service records or personal ID cards. A lot of other documents such as registers of residents, list of property owners or taxpayers can be located in the archives which, put together, can prove Polish ancestry of the father, grandfather or great grandfather of the person applying for Polish citizenship.

Our Law Firm does document searches in Polish and Ukrainian archives, in particular the archives new Lviv, Rivne, Tarnopol, Ivano-Frankivsk and Lutsk.

The chances of finding documents grow with the amount of information on their ancestors in the applicants’ possession. There are rare occasions, however, when the family’s exact address is known. The essential particulars of the ancestors include their names, surnames, dates and places of birth and places of residence, the latter two being particularly problematic. The family frequently tend to remember the name of a big city (Lviv, for instance) as the place of the ancestor’s birth or residence. The point is that the search for documents always focuses on the locality concerned. If, therefore, an ancestor actually lived in a smaller town or village near the big city (near Lviv, for example) the documents may not be found because the search was done in a wrong place. There is still a chance, though. Records in places of residence in the vicinity of people bearing certain surnames may be perused to find the required particulars in the region. This is not always feasible, however, and hence precise and accurate information about the ancestors’ habitation is exceptionally relevant.

Photo: National Archive in Łuck, Ukraine, June 2014.

27/08/2014

Polish citizenship and Polish passport – truths and myths.

Recently, in the papers there has appeared the next text discussing the topic of the Israel citizens’ interest in obtaining the Polish passport and the so called ‘certificate of the Polish citizenship’. The previous one – the moving story of Aaron Seidenberg written by Paweł Smoleński – was published by Gazeta Wyborcza. Unfortunately, the additional problems in this area are created by the increasing number of myths, which are fuelled by the journalists and the untrue ‘heard’ opinions.
Unfortunately, there also appear the unauthorised stories about the ‘anti-Semitic’ stand of the Polish authorities towards proposals for the certificate of the Polish citizenship submitted by the Israel citizens. Meeting several times with people taking care of ‘Jewish’ matters I have heard – that this is unfair – that the Polish citizenship has been taken from people serving in Cahal during the Israel independence war. That it is unfair that now they have to go through the long procedure of applying for the Polish passport – in order to obtain something that was taken away on the wave of anti-Semitic actions (it is mainly about people who left Poland in the years 1956-1968). Let’s see how it really is.

Law, law and once again law.

First of all, difficulties connected with obtaining (and using the right word – certifying the possession) the Polish citizenship are not only the problem of Israel citizens. In the XX century, many emigrant have left Poland – creating big centres of the Polish community around the whole world. All of them are under the same law and identical rules. The military service – if it wasn’t connected with the service in the Polish army, which was formed in the allied countries during the World War II – and if it wasn’t connected with the fight against the countries of the Axis, it always led to the loss of the Polish citizenship in the period of the first act about the Polish citizenship from 1920 (this law was changed in 1951), and thus the loss of the right for the Polish passport.

The citizens of Israel are not the exception here. And it doesn’t matter – that in Israel the military service was compulsory – and the necessity to fight for the independence in 1948 with the Arabic invaders seemed obvious. The act about the Polish citizenship – which regulated these issues was popularly known. Even – if the life has created the necessity to accomplish a specific and hard choice – it is hard to accuse the Polish country of introducing such regulations.

We should remember – that many countries in the world have accepted the rule of the ‘single citizenship’ – and it was a fundamental rule. The possibility of having many citizenships is the creation of the current times. In Poland, however, this rule had its exceptions – and the loss of citizenship – after obtaining the foreign one didn’t concern men capable of the military service. The Polish law understood the joining the military service in the foreign country as identical to the notice of loyalty of the Polish country (it can be described – that it discussed it as the ‘qualified type’ of acquiring the citizenship of the foreign country, deprived of any exceptions). The person, who was registered in another country in the foreign army – has lost the Polish citizenship. His descendants – and he – cannot now apply for the Polish passport.

Ratio legis of such normalization was the loyalty of the citizen towards the country and that is why such norm was introduced, that the Poles serving in the armies of foreign countries – in order to fight with the Hi**er invader and his allies, who didn’t continue this service after the war – didn’t lose the citizenship. Unfortunately – sometimes with the lack of awareness about this of people. This unfortunately is the situation of Helena Pelermann. From the very human approach, her situation may arouse sympathy – her father fought in the battle with Bolsheviks in 1920, her husband in Monte Cassino. However, when he enlisted to Cahal, he has lost his Polish citizenship, even despite his own and his wife’s services towards the Polish country. He has lost the Polish citizenship – and as the result of this, so did his wife (as that was the law). And again – Dura Lex Sed Lex.
Unfortunately – the arguments used in the press articles by the, so could seem, serious journalists are surprising.
And so, the same Paweł Smoleński has written a huge text about Helena Pelermann’s story and her attempts to retrieve the Polish passport (http://wyborcza.pl/1,76842,6058341,Nie_ma_paszportu_dla_pani_Heli.html).
And we could read there: ‘At first, indignant Maya G. called from Amsterdam. She was looking for a public person, as only such person – she thought – can help. She has chosen Artur Ż. She told him: - Ms. Hela was refused the Polish passport. Artur Ż., director of "Naszego śpiewnika", visual artist, committed artist. He wrote to ‘Gazeta’: - Ms. Hela was refused the Polish passport. He added something that media, publicity, several thousand circulation, pressure – all that together may solve the problem. Because – he recognized – this was an exceptional scandal. When I later asked Maya G., what she felt, when she heard about Ms. Hela, she said that shame and humiliation. As if somebody spat on me and kicked me – she said. What, Ms. Hela is not Polish? Do they know that she has kept the Polish uniform in her wardrobe for all those years? And it wasn’t Maya G. who has asked for the Polish passport of III RP and ‘the certificate of the Polish citizenship’, so they didn’t spit on her after all.’.

The biggest harm done to the people interested in the Polish citizenship, who are trying to obtain the Polish passport, is caused by the irresponsible journalists. There appears information about the ‘pressure’ in ‘media’ – giving false hope to many people that there are some secret channels, through which they can obtain the certificate of the Polish citizenship and Polish passport. This also exposes those people to victims of the swindlers, who don’t know the law – but they speak of the ‘contacts’, ‘connections’ and they use many other types of pseudo arguments so that the citizens of Israel can be tricked. I will never know – whether the story about the general of the Israeli army is true – whose father fought in the Polish army and in the war in 1948. He apparently paid more than 10 thousand dollars for services of the person informing that he knew the most important officials in the Polish government and MSW, who could get him the Polish passport and Polish citizenship. The result – the refusal of the certificate of the Polish citizenship.

Because the articles of laws won’t be changed. Similarly shocking seems the quotation used by Paweł Smoleński „The Mazovian provincial governor, Jacek Sasin (P*S), and the head of MSWiA, Janusz Kaczmarek, had no idea what they were signing. But they were hiring heartless fools, for whom the article was more important than the human being” (the case was still in progress during the P*S government – thinks Michał Wiśniewski). But today – as in any other time, the result couldn’t be different. The officials and the provincial governor cannot do anything that is forbidden by the rules. The legal rule simply cannot be omitted. It is impossible. Even the biggest love and attachment to Poland and the feeling of connection with this country are not the factors, which authorize to obtain the certificate of the Polish citizenship and Polish passport. The official cannot certify that the given person has the Polish citizenship – if, according to the law, the descendants have lost it 50 years ago. Such a person won’t obtain the Polish passport this way. In exceptional cases, however, this person can apply for the ‘grant of the Polish citizenship’ in the exceptional mode – but then the claims should be directed to the president – and not to the courts or the provincial governor. In order to explain – the way leading through the president’s office is an exceptional way – long and successful only in unique situations. What is more – the legal effects of ‘granting the Polish citizenship’ take place from the moment of granting. So, if Mr. X receives the Polish citizenship today – and he is 80, his children won’t have the Polish citizenship – because they were born before the Polish citizenship was granted to their father. It is different in case of the Polish citizenship ‘acquired’ in the way of ‘certifying the Polish citizenship’ – then we receive the decision – that we always had the Polish citizenship. People interested in the Polish passport will notice the difference quickly.

More bizarrely looking are the information on the websites of the Israeli offices – where we can read that we have to deal here with the discrimination, and the representing lawyers of the clients ‘fight’ with these limitations. There is nothing to fight with here – because this law is from 1920 and it solves situations, which happened until 1951. Any ‘fight’ is only the attempt of the dishonest advertisement. If we really want to obtain the Polish citizenship and Polish passport – we should trust more often the cold and sceptical evaluations – and not the people claiming that they can move the mountains.

Documents, documents, documents.

But let’s go back to the topic raised by Paweł Smoleński. This is the problem of a different type – the lack of documents. Unfortunately, many families, that have left Poland, do not have any documents, which could prove their own or their descendants’ possession of the Polish citizenship. That’s how it is in case of professor Seidenberg. There are simply no documents. They were gone, lost, destroyed. Bad luck? Unlucky. But what are the Polish authorities to do – in case when they encounter such a case? Trust one’s words? But this is not done in any country around the world. Professor Seidenberg simply has no proofs that he was Feliks Kajtuś. Moreover – there are no proofs that Feliks Kajtuś had the Polish citizenship. Feliks Kajtuś leaving Poland with the Polish passport is not listed in any documents.

And the procedure, which is discussed, has the title ‘possession of the Polish citizenship’ – so it cannot be given to someone – who cannot present such a certificate (in the form of right documents). We have to admit – that it would be much easier for people who emigrated already after 1950, as their documents are almost always possible to find.

The saddest situation is of those people – about whom ‘Gazeta’ doesn’t write – so, e.g., descendants of Hasid coming from Poland. As they are coming to places, which are important for their cult, and it was very rare for their descendants to serve in the army. However, the specificity of Hasid’s groups was – as it is currently in Israel – the way of life, as if ‘beside the country’. These families have often ignored various administration duties. Also the proper registration of marriages and births. As the result, it is very hard to find any documents concerning their descendants. The similar situation takes place with people living in the pre-war Warsaw – the documents cannot be found – as everything was destroyed.

Let’s imagine the following situation – two brothers were born in the Warsaw Prague – Szmul and Abraham. Abraham had a son, Icchak. Together with his brother in the 30s they sailed to Palestine. The Polish passport of Szmul was kept. It is still kept as the family souvenir. The passports of Abraham and his son were lost. The same with birth certificates. Their children come to Poland every year in order to visit places important to Hasids. And what? Szmul’s children have the Polish citizenship and Polish passports, and Icchak doesn’t. Because nobody can prove that Abraham and Icchak have ever had the Polish citizenship. And so, ‘ the negative premises cannot be ruled out’ – even if they present documents that the Israeli family has always lived together. But in the light of Polish law – who is Icchak and where does he come from – it is unknown. And even if we prove that he is Szmul’s brother, we cannot prove that the legal situation, thanks to which Szmul had the Polish passport was identical to the Abraham’s situation.

Sad – but is it sadder than, e.g., the fate of the daughter of the Australian and Pole, whose child, born ‘without the marriage’, was recognized by the father 1 year and 1 month after birth in the 80s? So exactly after a month after the time, which is recognized by the Polish law as the proper time to recognize the child, which leads to granting him the Polish citizenship. Blood tests, DNA or any other are of no use – the time was exceeded, the case is closed.
Misunderstanding

The misunderstanding is also a problem – for example, I had a chance to read a comment on one of the Polish social portals saying that ‘ Polish Jews were illegally deprived of the Polish citizenship, and now they need a lawyer to get it back – and the Polish authorities have the lists of citizens, who have left and they should simply send them these documents’. It is hard to comment something like that. That’s tough – because, as we can see, people writing such things have no idea what they are talking about. And they do not know – that the Jewish Poles are in a BETTER situation. So, the Polish citizens ‘of the Polish origin’ – who have left abroad permanently usually lost their Polish citizenship according to the law. And their children cannot even dream about the certificate of the Polish citizenship.

In case of Polish citizens of the Jewish origin, the Polish country has committed in most cases a specific procedural mistake – because of which the renunciation of the Polish citizenship can be questioned. And so – not worse – but better. Because Andrzej Kowalski – who left to Germany, has definitively lost his Polish citizenship and the Polish passport, and Mojżesz Goterwald – can still ‘get it back’ (and to be more precise – ‘confirm the Polish citizenship’). And even if Andrzej Kowalski didn’t escape from Poland through the green border – today, he and his children must go through exactly the same way.

Epilogue

All problems, which appear in the subject matter, simply cannot be described – as it would require several dozen – and maybe even several hundred pages of paper. Thousands of factors matter – petitioners’ years of birth, work performed abroad, marriage relationships, military service, the way of leaving the country, Polish and foreign documents. Some of the regulations may seem strange or unfair today. But we should remember – that all of them were standardized by laws even from before 80 years. And even those laws have specified – whether the given person has lost the Polish citizenship. Today the situation of the emigrants’ children is the same – with no difference – whether they are people of the Jewish origin or not. And there is about 20 millions of people around the world with Polish roots. Not all of them will be able to receive the Polish passport and obtain the official certificate that they are the citizens of RP. No group is unique here.


Michał Wiśniewski