My next project may be to see how feasible it is to apply for Polish citizenship by descent; both of my maternal grandmother’s parents were born in what is now Poland, as were several of her older sisters. (Grandmom always told us the family was from Austria, but well, Austria apparently meant the Austrian Partition of Poland, as I discovered when I actually started unearthing the documentation). I seem to meet the qualification criteria, in that none of my direct ancestors in that line did anything that would have made them lose Polish citizenship before 1951, when Poland first allowed dual citizenship - neither of them naturalized in the U.S. or served in the military, which are the usual disqualifying factors. The obstacles on that side may be somewhat problematic, though, in that a) many of the archives where the relevant vital documents were held may have been destroyed in WWII and/or been victim of other events (apparently one of them had a couple of normal fires, as opposed to ones caused by wartime bombardment), and b) anecdotally I am hearing that some of the Polish authorities can be, erm, less than flexible about accepting variations in the spelling of names due to things like Slavic vs. Yiddish versions of names for applicants of Jewish heritage.
However, it’s tempting enough that if it’s not insanely expensive, I might just be willing to pay a pro to do it for me, as apparently Poland recently started requiring applicants outside Poland to have an agent in Poland to receive mail for them, anyway. And I imagine the folks on the ground are better equipped to handle things like documenting name variations, etc.
Now, to figure out whether the necessary documents in Poland even exist anymore…