In our last video we have talked on how to find the geographical position of the town or village of your interest. We only talked about the area of modern Poland and today we want to add a short supplemental video, that will focus on its former Eastern borderlands.
Poland’s borders have changed through history. After the second World War Poland lost a sizable amount of its eastern territories, which were annexed by the Soviet Union and nowadays are parts of Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine.
We invite you to visit our Forum to see the historical maps of Poland, which might help you to have a better grasp on that subject.
Researching these territories can be fairly more difficult. How to find a place that is no longer in Poland? Watch our video to find out.
Technically it is possible to search for places outside of Poland on the website we talked about previously (Mapa Szukacz), but it does not always work well. So today we want to show you a different tool.
There is a great website named Eastern Borderland Places (Baza Miejscowości Kresowych).
We have already mentioned it in the article about genealogy research in Western Galicia.
The Eastern Borderland Places is a database of close to 55000 places mapped out and based on scans of maps of the interwar period. It focuses mainly on the mentioned Kresy territory, but is also includes some other, western areas (today in Poland). The website is fully available in English.
How to use it? You simply write name of the place of your interest in the browser and click search. In our video you will find more tips and examples.
The first thing you will notice after clicking on the found place is that you will have a map with the village marked on it. You can also easily switch to a modern map. Then you will also have its administrative affiliation and the location of the Roman Catholic parish (from the 1930’s).
You will find more tips on using this database in the video.
Good luck with your research,
Aleksander, PolishOrigins Team