I am currently in the process of trying to prove the Polish citizenship of my father in order to obtain a Polish passport for myself.

My father is 86 years of age, has lived in Canberra, Australia since 1950, has bone cancer and is very frail. I also have an Australian passport but now live in Auckland, New Zealand.

I've read messages on this forum about the difficulty and uncertainty of this exercise with people having to wait in some cases up to two years to obtain citizenship and/or passport.

My father was taken Prisoner of War in Germany whilst enlisted for the Polish army. He has an original Polish birth certificate (Zabrodzie, Eastern Poland) however I understand this doesn't prove very much of anything.

He does however receive a regular pension and ongoing compensation payments from the German government. Something possibly connected to World War 2?

Is the German pension payment useful in any way in connection with documents for Polish citizenship? My mother was receiving these also up until her death two months ago.

Whilst I am fluent in the Polish language my reading of Polish is limited and I don't write in Polish at all. I am presently writing the required Polish biography about myself which will be translated.

Whilst I'm writing it I can't help but feel it may be a long winded futile process and my father may not be around much longer.