Polonia

The Polish National Church was founded in 1897 in Pennsylvania by Reverend Francis Hodur. Father Hodur was born in Żarki in 1866, in the Austrian dominated sector of Poland. In 1893, he emigrated to the United States and was ordained into the priesthood at Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Parish in Scranton, PA. A political activist, Father Hodur undertook a mission to Rome to secure a greater voice for Poles in the American Church. Unrest among the Polish parishes was common during this period and rioting broke out in his parish in a dispute over the ownership of church property, use of the Polish language, and selection of local priests.

The 2nd and 3rd days of May are very important holidays in the life of the American Polonia, but also in the life of the entire global Polish diaspora. On May 2 we celebrate Flag Day and the Day of Polish Diaspora, andon May 3rd — the Constitution Day. This year, the Polish community in Milwaukee hosted representatives of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Washington, D.C., the military attaché Major General Cezary Wiśniewski and his deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Karol Budniak.

It is time for the Polish government to fund Polonia Departments in major universities. The story of Polonia must be carefully researched and presented if Poland wants to use this tremendous demographic asset to strengthen her role in the global arena. Currently, the study of the diaspora with ties to Poland, called Polonia, is fragmented, not coordinated with the strategy of country’s development, and often steered by foreign funding sources. Research findings do not reach Polonia centers around the world. Poland prides herself with the Jagiellonian University and its role as the academic cradle of Poland. We need a Polish university, which will lead the way in elevating the role of Polonia to its due place in the development of Poland’s global potential.

Why so few Poles, both those living in Poland and those permanently residing in the United States, remember this significant tenure in the area of American politics by a longtime senator, as well as the governor of Maine, and the secretary of state in US diplomacy?

The American Polonia has repeatedly contributed to the defense of Polish sovereignty and has made a huge contribution to the reconstruction of the Polish state. From 1910, she worked at various conferences on a memorial on the creation of the Polish state, so that after Jan Ignacy Paderewski's arrival in the USA, she joined her efforts and presented them to President Wilson. She sent to Poland and financed the modern, well-trained and armed Blue Army. She started financial aid for Poland, which continues to this day. (according to the World Bank, about $ 900 million annually).

I confess there’s much that I have in common with Masha Gessen, Barbara Engelking, and Jan Grabowski. We’re all middle-aged Jews, who by accident of birth in the post war era escaped the horrors of the Second World War experience. Additionally, our families originated from much of the same locales in Eastern Europe. My Dad’s people hailed from Lwow and Premysl in what was once the Austrian partition of the first Polish Commonwealth. On my mother’s side, I grew up hearing stories from both my Babcza and Great Babcza of life in a Russified Ukraine in the years before the 1917 revolution that ended Tsarist rule and brought Lenin and his gang to power over the expanse of Holy Russia.

In my opinion, a sterile discussion about Polish narrative has been going on in the Polish media since 2016. The year is 2021 and still nothing is happening here. There is no large medium that would promote Polish interests in English, in the global arena.

There is a Polish hero, a "cursed soldier", buried in one of the cemeteries in Milwaukee, and his name is Edmund Banasikowski. Colonel of the Polish Army, commander of the subversive group "Wachlarz", Deputy in the F Inspectorate of the Vilnius District of the Home Army. In the spring of 1945, he was arrested by the NKVD. He managed to escape from prison and make his way to Warsaw. In view of the growing Soviet terror and repression against former Home Army soldiers, he decided to leave the country. In the spring of 1946 he moved to Sweden, and in 1951 he left for the United States, where he settled permanently in Milwaukee.

This year, due to the Covid-19 epidemic, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was organized by the American Conservative Union not as usual near Washington, but at the huge conference center of the Hyatt Regency hotel in Orlando. Here in Florida, there are no restrictions on the size of gatherings, and the restrictions are limited to wearing masks in public, keeping a distance of 6 feet, and measuring the temperature of participants.

A representative of Kuryer Polski, Dr. Bogdan Kotnis, was invited to attend the 12th US-Ukraine Security Dialogue that took place on March 3 and March 4, 2021. A high quality of panelists and carefully selected topics allowed participants to learn a great deal about current political and economic concerns in US-Ukrainian relations.

"Polonia Christiana" published (June 4, 2019) an interview by Tadeusz Kolanek with Dr. Teodor Gąsiorowski, entitled How the myth of Haller's Blue Army was killed. It is very good that we return to the figure of the great Pole and the great commander, General Józef Haller, and recall the Blue Army. It is a pity that, at the same time, the same text is part of the plot to kill the memory of, the destruction and concealment of the figure of another great Pole, Ignacy Paderewski. His name is never mentioned in this interview, which is a poignant "abandonment" — hard to believe, and impossible to justify. I will focus here on the "Paderewski Case" - and rather than on Paderewski's "myth", on the truth about Paderewski.