Bette, I have an ancestor from West Prussia whose family I successfully researched using the records filmed by the LDS. Apparently, these records were ones removed from the area they lived to East Germany, where the Communists controlled them until the fall of the wall..The German thinking was that the people in them included ethnic Germans, and they, being record fiends, wanted them to be in their hands. My understanding is that many records were returned to today's Poland. However, while in German hands, the gov't at that time decided they did not want to find themselves in the situation of many German cities destroyed during the war with no records for their citizens. They approached the LDS and asked if they would film them for them - isn't that a turn of events? This info was provided to me by an acquisitions person with the FHL in SLC- and verified by the fact that the film 'preface' contains location of filming info and it was not in Poland!. As a result, many of these records from "German Poland" have been filmed. There is a website that show where there are records for the various parish/towns in West Prussia. I've found that while not all years are available on the LDS records, there are always alternate locations for these records in Civil Government hands, if not in church hands. I suggest you start with LDS records; certainly their access is easier and cheaper. I've not yet tried to write the gov't archives holding the records, but they are not always state archives, but can also be civil/regional archives. Anettka **************************** In a message dated 4/13/2007 12:06:26 AM Pacific Daylight Time, Bette: On a personal note, however, after spending a small fortune on Roman Catholic Church records (an 1840 marriage & eleven subsequent birth records for one family in what was then West Prussia, now Poland) I am questioning what other options I might have had. In my case, there were no extant church records to be had at the local level since the R.C. Church records of my interest had apparently been removed from the local parish to the R.C. Diocese Archives, at a distant location. In order to obtain these records, far fewer in number & scope than I had hoped for by the way, it was necessary for me to hire a Polish citizen/professional researcher to interface with the R.C. Diocese Archives on my behalf. This was a costly arrangement which resulted in far fewer records in number than I might have been able to afford to buy had I been able to deal with the church at the local level. I assume that the same parallel situation may exists for some areas and church affiliations in Germany today. ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.