Archiwum Państwowe w Suwałkach

The archive in Suwałki was created in 1921, but in 1926 all archival holdings was transfered to State Archive in Grodno. They were preserved in Staatsarchiv Konigsberg during the German occupation. After 1945 the holdings were relocated to various archives in USSR (Grodno, Moscow, Leningrad, Gorki, Kaunas, Vilnius). 19th century documents were concentrated in the State Historical Archive of Lithuanian SSR (Tsentralnyi Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Archiv Litovskoi SSR, now: Lietuvos valstybes istorijos archyvas). Only a small part of them returned to Poland on the base of vindication. The archive in Suwałki came into existence in 1954 as a County State Archive. In 1965 it was renamed the branch of Białystok Voivodship State Archive. In 1976, according to the reform of state administration, the Archive was again renamed the Voivodship State Archive, and in 1983: Suwałki State Archive.

Nowadays. The State Archive in Suwałki works on the ground of the Act on National Archival Records and Archives of July 14, 1983, Journal of Law, (Dziennik Ustaw) No 38, 1983.07.19 with later changes.

After the establishment of the Suwałki archive it was placed in the Court building. From 2000 the archive works in the restored building at Kościuszki street.

The oldest documents in Suwałki archive are concerning Wigry estate (16th century). It possesses also the following kinds of holdings:

• records of towns and villages (19th and 20th century),
• self-government and local administration documents (19th and the beginning of 20th century, and after 1944),
• documents of Police (interwar period),
• documents of German occupation authorities,
• birth, marriage and death records (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish),
• judicial documents (courts, 19th and 20th century),
• notarial files,
• documents of agriculture cooperatives,
• documents of political parties (PZPR, SD),
• documents of banks and financial institutions,
• family collections.