Odpowiedz do: Extent of the files in the Archive in Katowice

The census records were not retained, the point was statistical analysis, not the individuals behind the numbers.

If they retained German citizenship, then the military records are likely gone. If they became Polish citizens, then I guess your best bet would not be Katowice, but some other archive (if those records even survived).

There is no reason for a state to retain pension records for this long. I doubt they were kept.

Passports – depends on which citizenship they had. At least in Germany, passports were issued locally by the Landratsamt (county administration) in cooperation with the local police; abroad, they would have been issued by consulates (and those latter records are online). I would guess interwar Poland had a similar model.

Voter lists – again, why keep them? I have only ever seen those records survive in larger numbers in Brieg/Brzeg.

Going to the archive will only help if you can identify particular files to look through at the archive beforehand, especially since Katowice has a limit on how many files you can look at each day.

I should note here that some of the larger companies’ records have survived at the archive. For German citizenship matters, I believe Opole state archive would be a better bet; I was told they elhave a database of people they have citizenship files for which can only be accessed at Opole state archive.