# Civil Service Personnel Files Source: https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/records/civil-service-files/ Last updated: 2026-10-12 Summary: Investigate a Polish ancestor's working life through civil service, railway, postal and pension files, and learn what these records may reveal about family. Publisher: The Polish Genealogist (professional Polish genealogy research, polishgenealogist.co.uk) --- Personnel files kept by Polish state institutions are one of the less obvious routes into a family’s past. A single file can confirm a date and place of birth, schooling, promotions, transfers, pay grade and next of kin, and some include a photograph or a questionnaire filled in by the employee. Whether a file survives, and where, depends on the institution, the border changes after 1945 and Polish privacy law. > **Want these records searched for your family?** We trace your ancestors in Polish civil, parish and archival records and bring the findings together in an English-language report. [View research packages](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/services/family-history-research/) ### Working for the Polish state: 1918-1939 Between 1918 and 1939 the new Polish state built a single administration out of three systems inherited from Russia, Austria-Hungary and Prussia. Personnel paperwork from these years often mixes new Polish forms with older habits, particularly in the eastern provinces (the województwa of Wołyń, Polesie, Nowogródek, Wilno and Lwów), most of which lie outside Poland today. A civil servant’s file usually holds some of the following: - full name, with the father’s name or a maiden name on questionnaires - date and place of birth, sometimes with religion and citizenship - education, examinations and military service - appointments, postings, job titles and pay grades - commendations, disciplinary matters or sick leave - spouse and children, sometimes with the children’s dates of birth - pension calculations and service summaries Many of these files are hard to find. Offices were burnt, evacuated or abandoned between 1939 and 1945, and ministries and enterprises were reorganised after the war, so a pre-war office may have been merged or renamed with its papers moved several times, or not at all. Files from the eastern provinces, where they survive, are normally in the state archives of Lithuania, Belarus or Ukraine. The same person can also appear in quite separate series: personnel files, payroll registers, service lists, employee cards, pension files and disciplinary papers are often catalogued apart. ### Railway worker records (PKP) For railway families, employment papers can fill gaps that parish and civil registers leave. Railway records reflect both the partition-era networks and the post-war reorganisation of lines and staff. Surviving material tends to be summary rather than narrative: employee registers and personnel cards, postings to depots, workshops and stations, training courses for drivers, signalmen and mechanics, and confirmations of length of service for pension purposes. Some lists relate to wartime losses, dismissals or post-war verification of staff. The war broke most series. Railways mattered to both occupying powers, and railwaymen were displaced, sent to forced labour or moved east and west with evacuated stock. Personnel series therefore often stop around 1939 and restart after 1945, and post-war reconstruction records sometimes stand in for lost pre-war files. There is no single public PKP archive. What survives sits in state archives among the records of regional railway directorates, stations and technical units, in successor institutions, or in pension and service-length papers. The search starts from the place of work (town, station or railway district) and the approximate years of service, matched against the holdings of the relevant regional archive. ### Postal service and telegraph employee files Post, telegraph and telephone staff in interwar Poland were formally appointed and graded, and many were moved from town to town. Their files can record appointment and transfer dates, professional examinations, service summaries for promotion or retirement, addresses linked to each posting and family members named for allowances. The addresses are particularly useful when a family’s civil records are hard to place. The obstacles are mostly about cataloguing. An archive may describe the files of a post office as a whole without listing employees, so a file can exist without being findable by name. Communications staff were treated as strategically important during the war, and their papers can turn up in unexpected fonds or not survive. Later files may contain personal data that limits access. ### Teachers’ careers in state documentation State school teachers dealt with local authorities, school inspectorates and the ministry, so even where a personnel file is lost, other traces often remain: staffing lists for schools, inspection reports naming teachers and heads, correspondence about qualifications, pay, housing and transfers, and pension confirmations compiled later. Teachers are a special case because each partition had its own school system. Interwar Poland had to recognise qualifications, test language ability and regrade staff into Polish scales, and this transitional paperwork can hold more personal detail than the routine files that followed. For a teacher who worked in what is now Lithuania, Belarus or Ukraine, the relevant files are likely to be in those countries’ archives or lost. School reports, municipal files, local newspapers and professional directories then carry more of the weight. ### Pensions and retirement files of officials A pension file had to prove eligibility, so it pulls together facts from across a career: verified birth data, the full employment history with dates of postings, marital status and dependants, and correspondence after retirement that tracks addresses and changes in circumstances. Widows’ and orphans’ benefits created further paperwork. Where the original personnel file is missing, the pension file may be the only consolidated service history left. Access can be narrower than for other records because pension files contain medical and financial details. The later a file runs, the more likely the archive is to ask for proof of relationship or to restrict parts of it. ### How to access pre-war administrative records Where a file ended up, and what kind of file it is, decide how it can be reached. #### Where these records are held Most surviving interwar institutional records are in the Polish State Archives (Archiwa Państwowe). Civil registry offices (Urząd Stanu Cywilnego, USC) hold civil status registers rather than personnel files, but their certificates are often needed to support an access request. Diocesan and parish archives rarely hold state personnel series. Some sectors kept their own historical records in successor bodies, with less uniform access rules. #### What slows a request Archives may restrict files containing sensitive personal data, ask for a stated research purpose or redact parts of a file. Many personnel series are not indexed by name, so finding a file means reading inventories with an understanding of how the office worked. Records may be in Polish, Russian or German depending on the region, and surnames changed spelling. Pre-war Poland does not match modern Poland, so the right archive may be abroad, with its own procedures. #### What to gather before commissioning research - full name, with spelling variants, and approximate years of service - place or places of employment: town, district and the institution’s name if known - occupation and sector (railway, post and telegraph, teaching, ministry or local office) - any known employee number, rank, grade or pension status - birth, marriage and death details that distinguish your ancestor from namesakes ### Related guides - [Polish Police and Law Enforcement Records](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/records/police-records/) - [Polish Population and Residence Registers](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/records/tracing-households-and-addresses/) - [Polish School Certificates and Records](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/records/school-certificates/) > **Research service:** Was your ancestor employed by the state? · One family line and one defined research question · [Explore archival research packages](https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/services/family-history-research/) --- Research help: The Polish Genealogist researches Polish family history, military service and citizenship evidence in Polish, British and international archives, with reports in English. Services and prices: https://www.polishgenealogist.co.uk/services/