In today's interview, Kurier Polski hosts Jan Dziedziczak - Secretary of State, Government Plenipotentiary for the Polish Diaspora and Poles abroad.

The history of the Church of St. Adalbert in Milwaukee is part of the history of the Polish American community. The life of many outstanding Poles, and of the simple but very patriotic Polish emigrants who support their activities, is connected with the community of this church. This story deserves to be saved from oblivion.

“Already in the first days of my internment in Birštonas, near Kaunas, on the Nemunas, I went for a walk along the river at the camp's border. Suddenly I noticed a small object shining in the sun. I picked it up and smiled. It was a silver thaler from 1580. On one side it showed the image of Stefan Batory with the Latin inscriptions «Stephanus, Rex Poloniae, Magnus Dux Lituaniae», and on the other side there was the coat of arms of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth."

Three related activities defined Mazewski’s career: his building of a highly successful law practice, his engaging in Republican party politics, and his involvement in the Polish National Alliance fraternal. A PNA national director in 1947 at age 31, Mazewski was elected President of the Alliance over Charles Rozmarek in September 1967 at the 35th national PNA convention in Detroit. Long involved in the Polish American Congress, he was elected PAC president in 1968. He served as president for 20 years — until his death on August 3, 1988.

Wołyń-Zhytomyr is close to the heart of every Pole. In these areas and on the Poles living here, the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has left its mark of suffering. The following great sons of our nation were related to Żytomierz: Józef Conrad Korzeniowski, Jarosław Dąbrowski, Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, Juliusz Zarębski, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, and others.

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.

We, the Presidents of the Republic of Poland, the Republic of Estonia, Ukraine, the Republic of Latvia and the Republic of Lithuania, meet today in Warsaw to celebrate the 230th anniversary of the adoption of the May 3rd Constitution. The adoption in 1791 of this important act regulating the legal system of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was of historical importance, as it was the first modern basic law adopted on our continent and the second in the world.

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.

One of the most heart-wrenching reports a parent could ever receive is that their child is seriously ill. In Poland, this may not be where the bad news ends. Very often the parents of sick children are informed that the medicine or treatment which could save their child’s life is not supported by the National Health Fund (Narodowy Fundusz Zdrowia). This is when the real fight for a miracle begins because the costs of life-saving foreign treatments and medications are so high that they are out of the reach of the parents and the healthcare community. The available time to raise funds is typically a major challenge as well. This is a plea for a miracle and a plea for help.

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.

Rather than demand that Poland pay reparations to foreign Jewish groups for heirless Polish-Jewish properties, which is a precedent absent in Western law, Congress should demand that Germany and Russia pay reparations to Poland for the extensive death and destruction the Germans and Soviets inflicted on the country and its people during World War II.

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?

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.