Reviewed by Carlos Vargas, Texas Licensed Funeral Director (TFSC #119648) ·
Houston, nine states, and a different hour every day
Texas belongs to the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Houston, at 3040 Post Oak Boulevard, Suite 525, on the fifth floor. Its district is nine states: Texas together with Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Oklahoma. The Texas Secretary of State entry gives the same address and the same telephone number, which is a small reassurance worth having when two sources could disagree.
The detail that catches people out is the opening hours, because they are different on almost every day of the week. The consular office opens Monday from half past twelve until five, Tuesday to Thursday from ten until three, and Friday from nine until two. Closed at the weekend. Anyone driving four hours from Dallas on a Monday morning arrives before the door opens. We name offices and addresses in these guides, never the officers who staff them.
Two permissions, and the first one is in Poland
Poland asks for something no other guide on this site asks for. Before the consulate will issue the certificate that brings remains into the country, the family must already hold a permission issued in Poland itself, by the starosta of the county or the president of the city where the burial will take place. A county office on the other side of Europe is therefore the first step, not the last, and a family that does not yet know the cemetery cannot start.
What the consulate issues is the second permission: the certificate for bringing remains or ashes into the country, granted by the consul at the territorially competent post. The same page sets a deadline on the consul rather than on the family. The certificate is to be issued without delay and no later than three days from the day the application is filed. Alongside the starosta permission the consulate requires the original death certificate, or a certified copy of it.
| Stage | What the source says |
|---|---|
| First, in Poland | Permission from the starosta of the county, or the city president, for the place of burial |
| Then, in Houston | Application to the territorially competent Polish consular post |
| With it | The original death certificate or a certified copy |
| The consul | Issues the certificate without delay, at the latest within three days |
| Then | The remains travel with that certificate |
Seventy-one dollars, and then seventy-one dollars again
Poland publishes its consular prices in dollars. Line 4.02 of the consular fee table for the United States covers the issue of a certificate for transporting human remains through or into the territory of the Republic of Poland, and sets it at seventy-one dollars.
Then there is the second act, which families often do not realise is separate. Registering the American death certificate in the Polish civil registry is its own procedure, called transcription, and the consulate page for it requires the application at the territorially competent post, the original foreign death certificate, and a Polish translation made by a sworn translator or by the consul. Its fee is also seventy-one dollars. We checked this twice because the coincidence looks like an error, and it is not: two different services, two different pages of the consulate's own site, the same figure on each. Budget for both if the death is to appear in the Polish register as well as travel.
Poland is not on the 1937 list, and runs this on its own law
Several of these European guides turn on the 1937 Berlin agreement on the international transport of bodies. Poland is the exception. Germany holds the depositary status list, and its table as at 20 June 2023 carries nineteen rows. Poland is not one of them, any more than the United States is. What governs a Polish case is Polish law and the consular certificate described above.
That law is the Act on Cemeteries and Burial of the Dead of 1959. Its article 14, fourth paragraph, requires a permission from the starosta for the place where the remains are to be buried before they may be brought in from a foreign state, and says that permission is issued after agreement with the competent state sanitary inspector. That is the statutory root of the starosta step. The fifth paragraph puts the three-day limit in the statute rather than only on the consulate's page, and adds something the consulate does not mention: where the death was caused by a listed infectious disease, the permission is not issued until two years have passed. We read all of this in the consolidated text, Dz.U. 2025 poz. 1590, legal state 6 November 2025. On the Texas side the paperwork is ordinary. Poland has been inside the Apostille Convention since 14 August 2005, so a Texas apostille is the authentication a Texas certificate needs.
Ashes take the same road, with one more box to tick
Cremation does not shorten this. The urn needs the same consular certificate and the same starosta permission as a coffin, because the permission is about where the remains will rest, and ashes still have to rest somewhere. On top of that the consulate asks for two things specific to cremation: the cremation certificate itself, and confirmation that the ashes have been placed in a hermetically sealed container which holds nothing besides those ashes.
The carrier side is where this guide stops. LOT Polish Airlines' own site refused four separate addresses, returning a firewall denial each time rather than a page, so nothing is stated here about what that airline requires or accepts. Nor do we claim any nonstop routing between Dallas and Warsaw: flight aggregators suggest there is none, and an aggregator is not a source we will publish from. Your funeral director will book the routing that exists on the day, and the consular certificate and the starosta permission are the parts that cannot be arranged at the airport.
Questions families ask about a return to Poland
- What has to happen in Poland before we start here?
- Someone must obtain the permission of the starosta of the county, or the president of the city, for the place of burial. The consulate requires it before it will issue its own certificate.
- How long does the consulate take?
- Its page states the consul issues the certificate without delay and at the latest within three days of the application being filed.
- What does it cost?
- Seventy-one dollars for the transport certificate, line 4.02 of the published fee table. Registering the American death certificate in the Polish register is a separate act with its own seventy-one dollar fee.
Sources checked and case confirmation
Sources checked September 21 and 22, 2026 on the Polish consulate pages for Houston published on the government portal, the Texas Secretary of State index and authentication pages, the consular fee table, the parliament data service for the 1959 Act, the HCCH status table and the German depositary status list for the 1937 agreement. The statute text quoted is the consolidated text, Dz.U. 2025 poz. 1590, obtained from the parliament data service on a different host after the official legal-information portal answered with a verification wall. LOT Polish Airlines refused four addresses and is not cited, and no nonstop Dallas to Warsaw routing is claimed. Confirm the starosta permission, the document list and the fee with the consulate for the individual case. Contact Vargas-London with the county in Poland and where your relative is now, without sending medical or identity documents through the inquiry form.
