My name is Andrzej Selerowicz. I was born on 25 April 1948 (just a short time before the State of Israel was officially founded) in Bełchatów, Poland. I studied chemistry at the University in Łódz and worked as an engineer in Warsaw before I decided to immigrate to Vienna, Austria in 1976. As a sales manager I was traveling to many East European countries for 20 years.

Genealogy became my hobby some years ago when I started searching my own family roots. Parallelly I joined the JRI-Poland project, volunteering my time in collecting various historical documents and other relevant information about Jewish Shtetls in Central Poland. I have been able to provide translations for the website about my hometown, Bełchatów ShtetLinks Home Page. In my investigations I use my knowledge of history and geography as well as five languages (Polish, German, English, Russian, Czech and Slovak).

Just recently I was nominated to become the coordinator in a volunteer capacity of two ShtetLinks sites for Zelow and Grocholice, the two Jewish communities closest to Bełchatów. This is a great honor for me, and I am looking forward to this new and exciting challenge. I have already prepared an article about Zelow, which is currently viewable in my Reading Room and will soon be available at ShtetLinks.

Meeting a lot of people from various countries as well as being confronted with many delicate and difficult aspects of ethnic origin nowadays and in the past, I have discovered the importance of a profound knowledge. This was why I started reading even more books to better understand my point of view. Then I was surprised to learn many facts which I did not know before. As both of my parents past away quite early, I started my own investigations about my family and Shtetls of Central Poland in general and my hometown of Bełchatów in particular.