Things That Helped Me Learn More About My Family

Paul & Catherine Sanetra, November 1947, near Phoenix, Arizona

Disclaimer: I receive no monetary value for these recommendations. These are things I personally use in my research, to learn more about my heritage. I purchased many of these things from the PGSA store. Unfortunately, I only know English, so all of my books listed below were written in English.

App

Translation app I use: A Firefox add on called simple translate. You can highlight a sentence then a box pops up with the translation.

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Maps

Żywiec map, mapa.szukacz.pl

St. Florian Church marked on map, mapcarta.com

Żywiec (Saybusch) Cadastral Map 1844, on Gesher Galicia

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Books On My Bookshelf

God’s Playground, A History of Poland, Volume I: The Origins to 1795. By Norman Davies

God’s Playground, A History of Poland, Volume II: 1795 to the Present. By Norman Davies

No Simple Victory, World War II in Europe, 1939-1945. By Norman Davies

Europe, A History. A Panorama of Europe, East and West, From the Ice Age to The Cold War, From the Urals to Gibraltar. By Norman Davies

In Their Own Words. A Genealogist’s Translation Guide to Polish, German, Latin, and Russian Documents. Volume I: Polish. By Jonathan D. Shea & William F. Hoffman

Going Home. A Guide to Polish American Family History Research. By Jonathan D. Shea, A.G.

Being Góral. Identity Politics and Globalization in Postsocialist Poland. By Deborah Cahalen Schneider

First Names of the Polish Commonwealth: Origins & Meanings. By William F. Hoffman & George W. Helon

Polish Surnames: Origins & Meaninings. Volume I, Third Edition. By William F. Hoffman

Polish Surnames: Origins & Meaninings. Volume II, Third Edition. By William F. Hoffman (This 935 page book is like a dictionary of surnames.)

St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Cemetery, Minneapolis, Minnesota 1851-1995. Compiled by Mary Hawker Bakeman

Rediscovering Traces of Memory, The Jewish Heritage of Polish Galicia. From the permanent exhibition of the Galicia Jewish Museum, Kraków. By Jonathan Webber, photographs by Chris Schwarz

An Illustrated History of Poland. By Darius Banaszak, Tomasz Biber, Maciej Leszczynski. Translated with additional text by Richard Brzezinski

Memories of My Life in a Polish Village 1939-1949. Paintings, drawings and text by Toby Knobel Fluek

Tin Sails, A Memoir. By Zofia Wiśniewska Machnowska

DVD: Traces, A Film by Mauri Pasanen

DVD: Amerykafilm Presents: The Fourth Partition. A film by Adrian Prawic and Rafał Muskała. (I got this from the PGSA store. It has early 1900’s film footage of Chicago Polish neighborhoods, the time my newly arrived family lived there. The film is in both English and Polish.)

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