openBaltics
Contact usPlan a trip
Family heritage

Find your family's village.

We trace your family's roots through Lithuanian and Polish archives before you travel, then take you to the village itself: the church, the cemetery, the street, in person, with the people who did the research.

650,000+Americans claim Lithuanian ancestry
9M+Americans claim Polish ancestry
Family roots

Where did your family come from?

Start with the name you grew up hearing, in any spelling. We show you where the place is today, and Thomas sends you a free one-page report on it.

Any spelling works: Yiddish, Polish, German, Russian or today's name.

Step one, before you fly

The paper trail, found first.

You send us the family names, approximate dates, and whatever documents you already have: a naturalization paper, a ship manifest, a grandmother's letter. A genealogist takes it from there.

They search Lithuanian and Polish state archives, parish records, and address registries to place your family in a specific town, often a specific street, before you've booked a flight.

Step two, the trip

Standing where they stood.

The center of the trip is a visit to the ancestral town or village with a local guide and translator: the church or synagogue, the cemetery, the street, if it still stands.

Where it's useful, we arrange meetings with local historians, or, sometimes, with relatives still living there, and time in the regional archive to see the original records in person.

Step three, around it

The rest of the trip, built around that visit.

openBaltics builds the rest of the itinerary around that core visit, at your pace: Vilnius, Kraków, the coast, wherever it makes sense once we know where your family's story leads.

Every trip is private: no small-group tier, no shared bus, no handoffs to a subcontractor. The same team that did the research travels with you.

Pricing

Two ways to start.

The research and the trip are priced and booked separately, but the research fee is never wasted: it comes straight off the trip if you book one.

Research package
$527 flat (≈ €450)
If you book a trip
Credited in full toward it
The trip itself
From $4,563 per person, private only (≈ €3,900)

Prices shown in USD for reference. You're billed in EUR.

Before you ask

The questions we always get.

What do you need from me to start?
Names, approximate dates, and the country. Anything else helps: a naturalization paper, a ship manifest, a headstone photograph, a town name someone remembered slightly wrong. We work from less than people expect, and the research fee covers the search whether or not it succeeds.
What if the records were destroyed?
Sometimes they were, and we will tell you early rather than bill you for a year of nothing. Lithuanian and Polish record survival is patchy by region and by decade, and a genealogist can usually tell within the first fortnight whether your family's district is a good one. If it is hopeless we say so and refund the balance of the fee.
Is this only for Jewish family history?
No. We work with Jewish and Catholic families alike: Litvak and Polish-Jewish records, Catholic parish books, Lithuanian and Polish emigration records, and the deportation and displacement files of the 1940s. The archives and the method are largely the same.
How long does the research take?
Four to eight weeks before we can place a family in a specific town, sometimes a specific street. Longer if the district needs on-site archive work. We would rather you booked the trip after that answer arrives than before, which is why the two are priced and booked separately.
What if there is nothing left in the town?
That is the usual case and it is not a failure. A synagogue that is now a sports hall, a cemetery under grass, a street that kept its shape but not its houses. Standing in it with someone who can tell you what stood where is the point, and most people find that the absence is the thing they came for.
Can you find living relatives?
Occasionally, and we never promise it. It happens perhaps once in ten searches, usually through address registries and local knowledge rather than DNA. When it does happen we make the approach carefully, on your behalf, and we let the other family decide in their own time.
Start with a name

Send us the names you have. We will tell you what is findable.

A surname, a rough date, and any town anyone ever mentioned is enough for us to say whether the records survive and what a search would involve. Costs nothing to ask, and we answer in a day or two.

Start where you are

Begin with the research, or begin with the trip.

Tell us the family names, the dates you know, and any town you've heard mentioned. We'll tell you what's findable before you commit to anything.

Start your family's enquiry Browse all trips
Family Heritage Trips: Lithuania & Poland