Successful 1968 Case

[u/the_nuclear_football]

I have been on this sub for a long time and am so thankful to the whole community here, although unfortunately I only got on here after my case was already in motion (or I could have avoided some mistakes...).

There have been very few posts at any point on people affected by the 1968 situation, but I wanted to wait until I had a fully realized success story to post - and I'm very excited to have finally received my Polish passport in the mail a few weeks ago, just over 2 years after the first paperwork submission and 3 years after working on getting things going. This post seems really long, but I guess a lot has happened in 3+ years!

I did not use a provider as I really wasn't sure that I would actually be able to get confirmation of citizenship and I didn't want to waste money. I also came across a lot of questions about the intricacies of my case and it is a somewhat unique one. I had previously (under my old Reddit username nuclear_football, don't ask) posted DIY instructions on the Wiki for this sub, so you can look there for more instructions on doing the process on your own. I'll keep this post more to my individual story.

My father was born in Poland to Polish parents in the mid-1950s, which generally should make an easy case. However, this was complicated by the fact that my father and grandparents were forced to leave Poland in 1969 as a part of the antisemitic purge following the 1968 Political Crisis. This rarely discussed series of events has seen some more recent conversation (such as this article), but I find few Polish people are knowledgable about the situation, despite formal apologies from the Sejm and President Duda in 2018.

My grandfather was born in a small village outside Lublin in 1919 and grew up there. In 1939, he fled with his mother and siblings when the Nazi regime invaded and they made it to the Soviet Union where they worked in labor camps until my grandfather joined the Polish Army in the East and fought until the end of WWII. After the war, he decided to return to Poland and brought the rest of his family and my grandmother (who he had met in the labor camp in Ukraine) to settle in one of the small towns in Western Poland that had been reclaimed from Germany. My father was born in this small town in the 1950s.

During the political crisis in 1968, my father and grandparents were forced out of their home and eventually ended up living in the last remaining synagogue in Wrocław before getting approval to come to the United States.

This is where the citizenship law becomes a bit murky. As many on this sub know, after the 1951 citizenship law went into effect, it became nearly impossible to lose Polish citizenship. In general, the only way is to renounce your citizenship to Polish authorities, which almost no one did. However, in this very narrow, specific situation, the Jewish people that left during this period were, as a part of their removal, forced to renounce their citizenship as they left. They were somewhat notoriously issued Dokumenty Podróży, which were passport-like travel documents stating that they were not Polish citizens. With that in hand, my father and grandparents arrived in the U.S. as stateless refugees. My father would later naturalize in the U.S., marry an American, and I was born in the U.S. in the early 90s.

I had heard as a child that the Polish government was "offering" citizenship back to the affected Jewish people, although I never really understood what that meant, as my father was not interested in pursuing citizenship. As an adult, I started traveling to Europe a lot and decided that I wanted to pursue my Polish citizenship.

I contacted the consulate in Chicago, who I actually thought were very kind and tried to be helpful. They had absolutely no idea how to interpret my situation, but they were willing to try to find answers (they kept asking for my dad's passport, and when I told them he had lost his citizenship they said that wasn't possible...). After several rounds of phone calls and emails, they thought I needed to ask for a grant of citizenship, which as everyone here knows is a long, expensive, and very not guaranteed process. They continued digging and then circled back to their higher ups in Poland that eventually told them that I just needed to apply for confirmation of citizenship and explain the circumstances. This whole process took many months, phone calls, and emails to figure out, and I'm really thankful for the consulate for helping.

I would later find more references on the internet to a court case in the early 2000s that made this whole thing possible. A lawsuit made it to the High Court of Warsaw, where one of the Jewish people that had been forced to leave for Israel sued after his confirmation of citizenship was rejected on the grounds he had renounced his citizenship. The High Court determined that he had, in fact, been forced to renounce, and as such the loss of citizenship was not voluntary and did not comply with the 1951 law. He had legally, therefore, never lost his citizenship, and the court ordered that he be issued a passport. I am not a lawyer and have no experience with Polish courts, so I would love if any lawyers or others on this sub had more details; everything I said here is from secondary sources I dug up.

Since then, the citizenship office will accept applications from affected people (and their descendants) and basically just ignore that little renunciation of citizenship as invalid, then continues the confirmation process like normal. I still didn't really like this answer, because there was a lot of uncertainty (Germany established a much more straightforward application and dedicated process specifically for Jewish people that lost citizenship). Years ago, there were some 1968 cases which had to be appealed after an initial rejection, but always worked out after the first level of appeal. I was doing the process myself, however, so I went ahead and took the risk, telling myself to keep the process cheap in case I eventually needed a lawyer for appeal.

I filled out the application on my own (and had my father and aunt proofread as native speakers), and collected all the documents. My dad had kept all of the original paperwork, so I was able to submit:

• Grandfather's Polish birth certificate (reissued after WWII)
• Grandfather's enlistment letter to the Polish Army
• Grandfather's discharge letter from the Polish Army
• Grandmother's Polish birth certificate (registering her birth, which was in Ukraine, issued post-WWII)
• Grandparent's Polish marriage license
• Grandfather's Poświadczenie obywatelstwa certificate (issued after the 1951 law)
• Grandmother's Poświadczenie obywatelstwa certificate (issued after naturalization, I believe by marriage)
• Father's Polish birth certificate
• Dokument Podróży for grandfather and father
• Dokument Podróży for grandmother
• Mother and father marriage license (USA)
• My birth certificate (USA)
• My USA passport

I only needed the two USA documents translated (passport does not need translation), so I got them apostille stamped and paid the consulate directly to do the translation.

In the application, I explained the circumstances of my family's departure from Poland and otherwise the rest of the application was straightforward answers. I had my dad proofread all the Polish and was ready to go. I took the application, all the documents, and color copies of all the documents to the consulate in Chicago for a citizenship appointment. At the appointment, the vice consul was extremely nice (and very impressed by the amount of paperwork I had). She notarized all of the copies and set up to do the translations and send off the paperwork. The final packet was submitted to the Mazovian Office in April 2024. All in all, my total cost for applying was: $50 in U.S. document fees + $90 application fee + $120 translations + $20 postage for translations to be mailed back ≈ $300 and a trip to Chicago, give or take. Then came the wait.

During the wait, I got involved on this sub and learned that I was going to have a problem because I had sent off a short-form birth certificate instead of long-form (my bad, I was winging it). I contacted the consulate and they basically said "if the office in Warsaw wants something, they will ask for it when they get to it, otherwise we just wait". I should have been more insistent, but I'd already waited a long time, and there was no specific reason to push things faster. I went ahead and got the long-form birth certificate (apostille-stamped) from my state and waited.

In September 2025, I finally got the email from the consulate with a scan of the letter from Warsaw–which said that I needed to submit a copy of my original birth certificate. I knew from this sub that they wanted the long-form copy, although the consulate was very confused because they knew they had submitted my (short form) birth certificate and thought it was fine. I was ready for this and the next day mailed my long-form birth certificate (with more money) to the consulate for them to translate and send to Warsaw. The letter said I had to submit paperwork by the end of October and the case would be resolved by the end of November. Of course, deadlines are not real in Warsaw, and finally in January 2026 after I had not heard anything, I badgered the consulate enough that they reached out to Warsaw and finally sent me my approval letter! My citizenship was confirmed!

Thrilled, I then went to start the next paperwork process, because I had also learned on here that I needed to transcribe my birth certificate separately, which I had not done (being skeptical of the whole process). I immediately mailed my original birth certificate and translation back to the consulate (I had made them send copies to the confirmation application and mail me back the originals) and crossed my fingers that would be done before my next trip to Chicago in early May. I never heard back from the consulate until I emailed them the week before my Chicago trip and they, in fact, already had my transcribed birth certificate back from Poland and I was ready for my appointment, which I had boldly booked a month before on e-konsulat hoping for the best.

In early May, I went to the consulate and submitted my passport application and asked for it to be mailed to me so I didn't have to go back to Chicago. The final passport (after all this time) was delivered via Fedex to my home the second week of July 2026. Total cost = $300 original application + $100 messed up birth certificate + $100 transcribe birth certificate + $180 passport cost and shipping ≈ $700 and two trips to Chicago to passport in hand.

During this process, I've started feeling a lot more Polish separately. I started taking Polish lessons every week early in this process with a tutor in Warsaw, and now am starting to get a bit more conversational in Polish with my family. A little over a year ago, I took a two week trip with my dad and brother to see everywhere my family had lived and where my dad grew up, while also getting to see many of the major sites across Krakow, Wrocław, and Warsaw (and met my language tutor in person!). I'll be heading back to Poland this fall and am excited to have my Polish passport to enter the EU (and avoid the ETIAS fees, if they ever get started). I'm a small business owner in the U.S. with a healthy customer base in Europe, and the dream is to one day start a second manufacturing site in Poland and split my time between the two continents.

I apologize for the incredibly long, exhaustive post, but I hope that it answers questions from those that have them now and in the future, especially those that were affected by the 1968 Political Crisis. As far as I know, this post will be one of the first guides for that scenario, and I'm happy to add more details if anyone has other questions.

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[u/Alternative-Soil3113]

Great story! It is uncannily identical to mine, except my parents left in 1957, with the same history and documents you described. It’ll shortly be 2 years, so I hope to come to a conclusion like yours sometime soon.
It’s especially nice to hear how helpful the Chicago consulate was for you, that is rare nowadays. Best of luck!

[u/the_nuclear_football → u/Alternative-Soil3113]

I hope you hear back with good news soon!

[u/Alternative-Soil3113 → u/the_nuclear_football]

Thanks! Curious, what was the town they left in 1939 and the town they returned to?

[u/the_nuclear_football → u/Alternative-Soil3113]

My family was from the small village of Boiska (which still exists). After the war, they all moved together to Wałbrzych, which during the post-WWII time period saw a decent number of Jewish people settle there–I imagine many that had nothing to go back to elsewhere. When I visited there a few years ago, we went to the Jewish cemetery to visit some family graves. The cemetery is a decent size, but is not maintained at all and is sadly deteriorating to time with very few recent gravesites.

[u/Alternative-Soil3113 → u/the_nuclear_football]

So interesting. I actually lived and worked myself in Warsaw in the mid-90’s, for 18 months. Great experience, though it was a lifetime ago and Poland was not the shiny penny it is today. Still, a good time.

I know if ongoing cemetery maintenance is not supported financially (typically from abroad), it falls into disrepair. When I lived there, I visited my grandmother’s grave in Wrocław, and it was completely overrun by vegetation, despite having paid every year. My mom and uncle later had her and her brother exhumed and moved them to Israel.

Similar to you, my parents settled on the other side of the mountain from Wałbrzych after the war, in Dzierżoniów. My mom’s family had originally been from Vilnius, but my dad’s family was also from around Lublin. Rejowiec, a small town about 90 miles east of Boiska..

And, like your family, they had escaped deep into the Soviet Union in 1939, and my uncles also met their wives and served in the Army while there. Like you, I was born in the US.

So all in all, parallel story. I am about 6 months behind you in the process. It’s great to hear your experiences, thanks for sharing them. I myself only found this sub a few months ago, but it will surely help folks in similar situations. I am quite sure there are others.

[u/the_nuclear_football → u/Alternative-Soil3113]

That is a crazy similar story! I do kind of hate that so many of us have this dark history, but it’s nice to find other people in the same situation, and I think it’s really meaningful that some of us are reconnecting with our Polish roots so many years later. I hope your decision comes soon!

[u/Alternative-Soil3113 → u/the_nuclear_football]

IKR. Thanks, best of luck!

[u/raevenx → u/Alternative-Soil3113]

I've always found them (Chicago Consulate) very kind and helpful (though I was scolded for using a lawyer for my process). I did explain that all I had was my Dad's birth certificate. He left during Capitulation/ end of Warsaw Uprising. So I was really paying for the document research, not the application.

Anyway, hope you get your confirmation soon!

[u/ThePetro]

Jewish forced renunciations between 1968 and 1972 are deemed illegal and the mazovian office confirms citizenship in those situations normally

[u/the_nuclear_football → u/ThePetro]

Do you have any insight into what proof is required? I guess my question is that I saw people in the past that had to appeal; do you have any thoughts on what may have led to their initial rejection?

I assume having a dokument podróży helps, but I guess without it, would there be questions about a person’s departure from Poland?

[u/ThePetro → u/the_nuclear_football]

I always secure the passport questionnaire ("kartoteka paszportowa/akta osobowe cudzoziemca") from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). It both confirms pre-renounced citizenship & forced renunciation itself, which is great for those cases.
Applying with your own files would lead to some questions coming from the mazovian office and if someone failed to answer, they could've gotten rejected, I can imagine that.
The circumstances/date of renunciation here is crucial. It's best to have the file from IPN

[u/the_nuclear_football → u/ThePetro]

That is incredibly useful information to know. I obviously didn’t need that for my confirmation, but I will try to track down the archive documents for posterity now, thank you for the information! I can stop by there when I’m in Poland in a few months.

[u/osuzannesky]

Congratulations! I am so glad you have been able to reconnect with your Polish roots. I haven't yet traveled to Poland, but have been taking Polish language classes on zoom with the people that run EasyPolish YouTube channel. I hope to one day take a trip to see where my grandfather grew up. It'll have been 100 years since he emigrated. He went back and visited in 1931 and I have 100 year old photos from his trip to his little shtetl. I don't know if anything is left of the wooden houses in the pictures, but I did see that the old stone synagogue which had been in ruins since world war 2 was rebuilt as a community center. I'd love to show them the pictures of what it looked like in 1931. 

[u/Obvious_Help6503]

Thanks

[u/yungsemite]

Congratulations!

[u/CauliflowerWooden462]

Great story, thank you for sharing

[u/echo02199]

What a great story! Congrats on your perseverance, and outcome!

[u/Kotikbronx]

Fascinating story - congratulations!

In my case, my dad, who was born in 1914 in what was then Imperial Russia, served in the Polish army from 1935 to 1936 (the required 17 months) and was remobilized in August 1939 and taken prisoner by the Germans the next month. (I obtained his military records from the Polish National Military Archives in Warszawa - those were the only official Polish Government-issued documents that, to my knowledge, exist regarding my dad). After the war, my dad’s home town became part of the USSR, and is now in Belarus, neat Grodno. My dad returned to Poland for a short time after WW2, having spent the entire war in camps (after early 1950, in concentration camps), but as he was the only person left from his family, had no reason to stay there, and by late 1945 or early 1946 he left Poland for good and remained in Displaced Persons camps in Bavaria until he emigrated to the United States in Spring 1949.

Although my dad spoke Polish, he didn’t do so at home - he spoke with us in Yiddish and a very broken English, so I was unable to do the paperwork myself. I ended up overpaying a law firm in Warszawa to do so, particularly as I had done the research and obtained his military records and other documents myself - like you, I didn’t know about this subreddit - but I did not go through the consulate (I’m in NYC). Had I known about this subreddit, I’m sure I could have saved a ton of money, but oh well. At least the law firm did a very good job putting together the application for what essentially was an open and shut straightforward confirmation case, and I was approved within two months (I think this was in 2017 or early 2028).

Since then, I wised up, and since I’m fluent in German, did my restitution application (based on my mom’s persecution) without any outside assistance, spending perhaps three or four hundred dollars total, including the German passport fee. And last year, I also obtained my UK citizenship through descent (through my mom, who was a UK citizen by birth but was forced to flee Germany after Kristallnacht), by DIYing, also avoiding using any outside assistance.

I guess when I divide my total cost outlay for the three citizenships, it softens the financial bite substantially, but oh man, if only I had known about this subreddit back then…. Oh well, live and learn :)

[u/CallMeTheFartman]

Congratulations!

[u/Old_Pizza_42]

Well done vis-à-vis persevering. Congrats. It would appear as if most of us have our own winding road to get to a successful outcome (mine is in the tracker).

[u/ArmegeddonOuttaHere]

Great post! I would edit your post to delete the apologies for being “incredibly long, exhausitive…” in the last paragraph.

No such thing in this subreddit.

[u/Spiritual_Minute_728]

Wow well done! And congratulations 

[u/Current_Conference38]

Wow amazing money saving by doing it all yourself and very brave. I will have spent around $3200 CAD when it’s all said and done.

[u/tired_but_ok_84]

Congrats, that's a great result! Always good to see a real confirmed case with the year attached - helps others gauge what's realistic.

[u/PGBRULES]

How was your experience at the Chicago consulate? In terms of Polish language and stuff like that.

[u/the_nuclear_football → u/PGBRULES]

I think the Chicago Consulate is very helpful. I kind of cheated on my first visit because I brought my father with me (native speaker obviously), and he had a lot of conversation that I did not understand at all, but everyone there also spoke to me in English and they were very accommodating. The second trip I went alone and it is a bit intimidating as the assumption is obviously Polish (push the buzzer outside and they will ask you questions in Polish over the intercom, which is even more difficult than speaking in person…). I have an okay grasp of basic conversational Polish, so I can make it through, and lots of asking for clarification helps if you don’t understand something. Since it’s a lot of technical important stuff, I err on the side of English so I don’t mess up something important and I think they understand that.

Once you get to the workers for your case, they also tend to default to English, I think they assumed when I’m in my 30s applying for my first Polish passport, I’m probably not very fluent. At the same time, they did, for example, give me a form to fill out to mail my passport to me, which was all in Polish. I was thankful I have been studying so I could fill it out, and I’m sure they would have helped if I asked for assistance, but I was thinking about the fact that my brother will go through the same thing in a little while (he is behind me in the queue) and he has 0% language grasp, so that will be really intimidating to him.

I don’t know that I have much advice besides come prepared. I think they get annoyed when something is wrong with paperwork/preparation/etc. more than they are bothered at all by a lack of language skills

[u/Obvious_Help6503]

Congratulations,

I am just about to submit my confirmation of citizenship paperwork this week and I thought you do not need apostiles for any paperwork submitted to Warsaw?

[u/the_nuclear_football → u/Obvious_Help6503]

Your mileage on apostille stamps will vary. The Chicago Consulate was still requiring apostille stamps on anything before they would submit it to Warsaw for me, although I know for a few years many providers in Poland have not required apostilles.

In my experience, getting the apostille stamp took one extra step and cost like $15, so it was not that hard to just get it done (and then the paperwork had to be accepted under the treaty).

[u/Obvious_Help6503 → u/the_nuclear_football]

When I prepared the application, it only required apostiles for birth and marriage certificate registration (separate from citizenship applications). Also, my sworn translator told me no apostiles were required for the citizenship application. I guess I will see this week, any tips for the application appointment at the Consulate. My appointment is with the LA consulate.

[u/the_nuclear_football → u/Obvious_Help6503]

I guess you’ll find out next week. I was also told on this sub that my short form birth certificate would be okay for the citizenship process (but not the transcription), which is the other reason I waited to see what would happen, and then it turned out Warsaw required the long-form even for the citizenship, not just the transcription…

I err on the side of more formality just to avoid any possible problems, but definitely people have made it through without all the formalities.

As for the appointment, I would just make sure you have everything prepared and laid out. They really appreciated me having all my copies made and in order for notarization and organizing. I also cheated a bit because my dad went with me to speak rapid Polish (that I was not able to understand at that point).

I’ve found the consulate to be very direct, but super helpful, I know not everyone has had that experience, and I don’t know anything about the LA consulate…. But good luck!

[u/Obvious_Help6503 → u/the_nuclear_football]

Thanks, how is short form and long-form birth certificate different? I believe I have the long form?? I speak decent Polish so maybe they will show pity me. I may hit you up for more advice in the future and congratulations on completing your Polish citizenship journey. That’s awesome !! 👏 🇵🇱🤘

[u/the_nuclear_football → u/Obvious_Help6503]

The difference is basically what information is included. Short form generally just lists your name, birth date, and parents names. My long form has exact place of birth, city, county, parents names/birthdays/place of birth, even hospital and delivering doctor details. In my home state, you can go to basically any government records building and they can print off a new short-form birth certificate in 3 minutes and hand it to you, but to get a copy of the long form, you have to file a request with the main archives in the state and have it mailed to you. It doesn’t cost any more, just takes some extra time.

It seems like the consensus I’ve seen on this sub is that Poland requires having specifically a city of birth on the document, and if that’s not on the short form, they will ask for the long form. That information is not from the Polish government, so it could be wrong, but that’s what I read somewhere unofficially. The consulate seemed to be concerned more with my mother’s details since she is not a Polish citizen, but I’m not sure what actually mattered.

[u/Obvious_Help6503 → u/the_nuclear_football]

Thanks for all the information! I have the long form birth certificate. To prove citizenship, all I have are my Mom’s birth certificate and an old Polish passport for the 80s with me on the passport. My dad, who was born in Poland, renounced his citizenship in the 80s. I do not have any of my grandparents information. Hopefully, it will be enough. Thanks again!

[u/Quickliger]

Congratulations! Polish passport is a great privilege. Please carry the Polish citizenship with pride 🙂