Any tips on German/Polish records WW2 and before please

[Framesmiths1816]

I have a relative born in Silesia in 1924 into a Catholic Family.  From what I have found out so far she was born in a place that goes by different names and different times. It is Mechtal in Germany or Miechlowitz in Poland is near a town called Beuthen (now Bytom).

Her parents, according to family members, were part of the 3 million Gentile Polish people sent to the camps and I think her parents were at Auschwitz as forced labour. Her father died there but her mother survived. I have been reading what I can find on the internet and it appears that a very large non-Jewish Polish population (20% of the total population) were part of the final solution but I cannot find where to start looking for information. There is a great deal of information on members of Jewish families but I cannot find any sources for the 3 million Polish Gentiles that died also. Perhaps I am not looking in the right places?

Can anyone help me with information sources and places that I might try? I feel very strongly that I should try to find out as much as I can on this branch of my family because there is no-one else left to remember who these people were. As far as I know this family name is nearly, if not already extinct in Germany and Poland now

Many thanks

Mark

[Gaie]

Hi Mark

To trace records of those incarcerated in concentration camps or sent into forced employment, you can submit a request at this website:
http://www.its-arolsen.org/en/homepage/index.html

There is a form to fill in on-line:
http://www.its-arolsen.org/en/humanitarian_requests/application_forms/online_form/application_for_information_1_person/index.html

As far as I remember, you must fill in every box, even if it's "not known"; otherwise the form may be rejected.  They will send you a confirmation e-mail immediately, but it may take months to receive a further response.  The service is free.

For genealogical records in Poland, a good place to start is familysearch's library catalogue place search page:

http://www.familysearch.org/eng/library/fhlcatalog/supermainframeset.asp?display=localitysearch&columns=*,0,0

Entering Mechtal brings up results for a place near Beuthen so it looks hopeful.  Of course, you will have to order in the films via the LDS.  And it looks like the parish registers were written in German.  Again, you may have to wait some time for the films to arrive as unless somebody else has previously ordered them in the UK and they are now being held at the main repository somewhere up North, the LDS will have to order a copy from Salt Lake City and it can again take months!!!  But it is well worth the wait - currently I have five films of Polish parish registers to view in the London FHC and they usually have a lot more detail than the CofE registers, such as mother's maiden names for births, where spouses were from and relationship of some witnesses at marriages, and cause of death, who reported the death, and plot numbers for burials.

Hope this is helpful.
Kind regards
Gaie

[Gaie]

Mark, I think it's now Miechowice near Bytom in Poland 
Kind regards
Gaie

[Framesmiths1816]

Hi Gaie,

Many thanks for these pointers. I did find the ITS site this afternoon and filled out the form.

I have tried the LDS for the surname but I hadn't though to try on place names. If the LDS have German Language registers then that would be great even if they take months to arrive. I find I have no intuition for understanding Polish language web sites but I can understand some German.

Many thanks again - Mark

[Gaie]

Hi Mark

I'm probably trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs here, but have you tried Google translate?

Copy website link or text
Go to Google homepage
Click on "more" - top left hand side
Paste link into the box and select languages to translate from/to

A word of warning when using this or any online translation tool for Polish to English - they have a nasty habit of making positive sentences into negatives or vice versa, and changing male names into females....   And it's hard to "intuit" slavic languages....

Kind regards
Gaie

[Framesmiths1816]

Hi Gaie,

Automated text translation does work but has its flaws. When web designers put text into graphics (images) that they use for buttons and design features for example. However these graphics cannot be translated because they are not text. That is where I am lost with Polish and most of the sites I have looked at have a lot of these graphics in them. I will give you an example nasza-klasa. pl very little is automatically translated.

Don't worry about 'sucking eggs'. I don't take offense when someone wants to help me. I would rather have too much info than not enough.

Many thanks and best regards - Mark