History

May 28, 2021 marks the 80th anniversary of Fr. Maksymilian Kolbe - the guardian of Niepokalanów, a Franciscan monastery and a large publishing house - having been imprisoned in the German concentration camp at Auschwitz. On this occasion, the Franciscan Publishing House «Fraternal Call» in Krakow will be publishing a volume of poetry by Kazimierz Braun entitled "Songs of Saint Maximilian and other poems".

In recent years, the places better reserved for historians have been taken by propagandists for whom the facts are irrelevant. Thanks to this approach, victims of the Second World War are equated with the perpetrators, and the actual perpetrators of war crimes are either silent, or semantically neutral terms are used for them in order to divert attention from their guilt.

Clement Zablocki was born on November 18, 1912, the son of a grocery store owner on Milwaukee’s heavily Polish South Side. A diligent student who completed his college studies at Marquette University in 1936, Zablocki, well-liked and highly motivated, won many friends in his community by teaching civics to new immigrants and serving as his parish’s church organist. In 1942 he won election to the Wisconsin State Senate as a Democrat.

The book by Imogene Salva entitled "One star away" was published by the author's efforts in 2020 and tells the story of her mother, Józefina Nowicka, who as a child was deported from Poland with her parents and siblings by the communist authorities of the Soviet Union and placed in a forced labor camp in arctic areas of Russian Siberia during World War II.

The Poles were the only nation that did not give up the fight after the defeat in September 1939. Polish soldiers fought wherever there were fights against fascism. They believed that all roads lead them to a free Poland. Among such unwavering optimists were also men from the 1st Polish Armored Division of General Stanisław Maczek.

I never saw Poland, but I fought for the cause of a free Poland. Never did I and never will I waver in this struggle.… Let us love Poland, the land of our fathers. Let us love America, the land of our children.

The year 2021 was established by the Sejm and the Senate of the Republic of Poland as the Year of Cyprian Kamil Norwid on the occasion of the bicentenary of his birth. On this occasion, the Polish community abroad organizes various cultural events related to the figure and work of this outstanding Pole.

The bankruptcy proceeding of the Buffalo Roman Catholic Diocese is overseen by Honorable Carl L. Bucki, the federal Chief bankruptcy Judge for Western New York. It involves tens of thousands of persons and reaches as far as Poland and the Vatican. The symbolism of a devout Polish American Catholic presiding over the legal consequences of decades-long sex scandal in the Buffalo Roman Catholic Church cannot be overestimated.

National identity is one of the fundamental human rights. In the recent frenzy of various old and newly formed identity claims, this fundamental right of some is increasingly being compromised and trampled upon to make room for new demands of others. Polish Americans have often been at the receiving end of being attacked and their national dignity compromised. Poland slowly emerges from behind the curtain of colonialism, poverty, and neglect, which closed shut after 1945. The issue of Polish national rights and the rights of American Polonia to their historic identity needs to reach the mainstream media with due attention and respect.

The fathers of the Polish basic law, known as May Constitution, knew the American constitution and were no strangers to the names of Washington and Franklin. Europe, mainly England, France and Spain, closely watched the process of strengthening the central government in the united provinces of America. Through France, news of the principles and forms of government of the thirteen united states reached Poland, gaining, if not sympathetic recognition, then at least prudent attention. The principles of the American constitution appeared in excerpts in the press, as well as in book editions.

Single mothers in Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the 1980s and 1990s revived the cult of a Voodoo goddess Erzulie Dantor, the lwa of vengeance and rage. How is the iconic representation of Haitian Voodoo senior spirit originating in West Africa influenced by the patron saint of Poland, the Black Madonna of Częstochowa?