Nasz Przegląd Warszawa Death Notices, 1923-1939

In lieu of the availability of 20th century Warszawa vital records, the Warszawa Research Group has indexed the death notices and memorial service notices from the Polish-language Jewish periodical Nasz Przegląd (“Our Review”).

Nasz Przegląd was a Polish-language Zionist newspaper, published daily in Warszawa from March 1923 until September 1939.

The vast majority of the death notices are for Warszawa residents.  However, there were also notices for people in other cities in Poland, as well as in other countries.  It is believed that the out-of-country notices were usually for people whose original residence was Warszawa, or who had family living in Warszawa at the time that the notice was published.  Out-of-country notices were published for people living in places such as the United States, Palestine, Sweden and Canada.

Availability: The Nasz Przegląd issues from July 1937 through August 1939 are available at the New York Public Library [call number: *ZY-*P43] (12 reels).  The YIVO Library has issues for 1923-1939 [call number Y-96-1543.1-137]; and Harvard's Lamont Library also has the 1923-1939 issues [call # Film NC 435] (39 reels).  Copies are also available at The National Library of Israel in Jerusalem [call # PV 3236].  Nasz Przegląd is now available online at Polona and is sourced from the Bibliotecka Naradowa in Warszawa.  The Warszawa Research Group has begun to link the Nasz Przegląd images to the search results.  Link images will show the words “Click for page image” on the line of the search results.

Database Contents

The database currently contains 20,743 death notices from 1923-1939.  The dates of coverage are specified in the table to the right.  Additional entries are being added as indexing work is completed.

Database Fields

The following items are the fields recorded in the database.  The first three fields are always present.  The remaining fields are recorded only where the information is available in the newspaper.

• Issue Date — the date the newspaper was published.
• Surname — the deceased's surname.
• Given Name — the deceased's given name(s).  In a few cases, it is derived.
• Maiden Name — the deceased's maiden name.
• Age — age at death of the deceased.
• Died — the date of death.
• Spouse — the deceased's spouse's given name.
• Town — the town of where the deceased resided at the time of death.  This field is left blank for residents of Warsaw.
• Memorial — an indication if the notice is for a tombstone unveiling or memorial service.

Those entries labeled "Memorial Service" come from an advertisement which lists many names with the time and date of the memorial service.  Very rarely is there any additional information on the deceased in the memorial service advertisement.

For the death notices, however, not all of the available information in the death notice may have been recorded in this database.  A review of the original death notice may also contain information such as:

• Surviving family relationships and possibly their given name and surname, i.e. if there were sisters, brothers, children, grandchildren, parents, etc.
• Address of the deceased
• Towns/Country where surviving family members live
• Location of plot in cemetery
• Deceased's profession
• Deceased's organizational affiliations

If multiple notices/advertisements for the same deceased was present in the same newspaper issue, then only one entry was documented in the database.  If notices appeared for the same deceased over several issues, then the database recorded an entry per newspaper issue.

Please note certain information such as name spellings, variations of given names, and the age at death may differ from notice to notice for the same person.

Examples:

Here are some typical examples of the death notices.

Click on either image for a larger view.

Additional Information:

For assistance in translating Polish obituaries, the Polish Genealogical Society of America (PGSA) has compiled a glossary of common terms, which can be found at http://pgsa.org/PDFs/DzChicObit.pdf (13 pages).  Also see William Hoffman's “A Crash Course in Polish: Words You Can Use” (15 pages).  [Both files are in PDF format, which requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader].

A good resource for Polish Jewish newspaper information is the article written by Michael C. Steinlauf, "The Polish-Jewish Daily Press", in Polin - A Journal of Polish Jewish Studies, Volume 2, 1987. (Oxford, England: Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies), ISSN #0268-1056.

Information about Nasz Przegląd can be found in an article in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, at http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Nasz_Przeglad.

For further questions, please contact Hadassah Lipsius.