Archival Records and Jewish Family History

“Referring to my brother Szymon Dzigan, an artist of the Jewish stage, I have the honor to respectfully ask that you kindly use your influence to grant me, or possibly my husband, any kind of employment, as I find myself in a very critical financial situation, partly caused by an illness that ended with the death of our three-year-old little boy, as well as my mother.” — a letter written by Ruta Dzigan Trajster.

Each document contains only a small fragment of information — a profession, an address, a date of birth, or the names of family members. But when combined, they allow us to reconstruct the everyday life of a family and place it within the broader history of the city.

When researching Jewish ancestors from Łódź, many people begin with birth, marriage, or death records. However, the archives of the city preserve many other types of documents that can reveal remarkably detailed information about its former residents.

Jewish genealogy in Lodz requires understanding how Jewish surnames evolved in 19th-century Poland.

If your family story includes a forgotten street in Lodz, a factory once owned by a great-grandfather, a marriage linking two well-established families, or a silence beginning in 1939, you may already be closer to this history than you think.

In many cases, descendants living abroad have never seen the building where their grandparents once lived. Contemporary photographs provide visual context. Archival documentation provides historical depth.

The testimony of Lili Giske brings us back to prewar Lodz - to family life, work, addresses, and the everyday reality of a Jewish family deeply rooted in the city. In her interview, she speaks about her parents, her siblings, the factory, and later about the years spent in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto.

From the surviving records, we can reconstruct a remarkable life of Jerzy Altman: a genealogy reaching back to the early nineteenth century, studies in Belgium, industrial activity at Narutowicza 27 in Lodz, service as a Polish Army officer, imprisonment in Starobelsk, and execution in Kharkov in 1940.

The life story of Hana Svirsky is known today through her testimony as a child survivor of the Holocaust — a story shaped by displacement, loss, and survival in wartime Europe. Raised across different households and countries, Hana’s reflections offer a deeply personal perspective on growing up between families, identities, and worlds disrupted by war.

For genealogists, this example shows why it is essential to look beyond summaries and biographies and return to original records whenever possible. Sometimes a single document does not give the answer — but several documents, read together, do. And sometimes, what looks like a settled fact quietly changes.

At the turn of the twentieth century, sport was gaining popularity throughout Europe. Within Jewish communities, physical activity was viewed not merely as recreation, but as a meaningful social and educational practice.

The starting point for this article was a short biographical note. While working with the Słownik biograficzny Żydów łódzkich oraz z Łodzią związanych (Biographical Dictionary of Jews from Lodz and Connected with the City), edited by Marek Szukalak, I came across an entry devoted to Dawid Saul Rieger — a teacher and later headmaster of the II Gymnasium in Lodz. He was clearly a significant figure in the educational life of the city.

This is how archival research often works. Not through a single decisive document, but through a quiet sequence:exam protocol, identity record, birth certificate, registration card, burial record.

The Maturity Examination Protocol (1928/1929) of the Second Jewish Male Secondary School of the Society of Jewish Secondary Schools in Łódź is available as a searchable index on JewishLodz. The index includes personal names recorded in the original archival document and forms part of an ongoing effort to make key archival sources more accessible.

These documents reveal how families attempted to navigate an inescapable system, using the limited tools available to them—professional identity, education, past social standing—in the hope of securing work and survival.

Sometimes a single archival document is enough to open an entire family history. In the records of the Łódź Ghetto, such moments are not uncommon — yet each leads to a different, deeply individual story.

Family stories often survive only in fragments — a name without a date, a place without a document. This article follows the archival search for “Grandfather Jakub,” tracing Jewish family history connected to Łódź through indexed records and surviving documents.

Jewish genealogy in Łódź relies heavily on municipal and administrative records rather than exclusively on vital registers. Repeated population registration, identity documentation, and property records created a dense archival landscape in which individuals often appear across multiple record series and years, making genealogical reconstruction both promising and demanding.