Veterans Day: Not Only An American Holiday

For the Polish people, however, it was something even more than just the end of the war. It was also the end of 123 years of suppression of their culture, language and freedom. It was the degradation of their personal and national identity.

From 1795 to 1918, the maps of Europe showed that a nation like Poland no longer existed.

The territory of Poland was completely stolen away from the Polish people. The thieves were the three hostile and ravenous neighbors situated around the country’s geographic borders.

Russia, Prussia (now Germany) and the Austro-Hungarian Empire each banded together to swallow up the land of Poland and the Polish people who lived on it.

It was no wonder that far away places like New York’s Ellis Island and Statue of Liberty became such an enticing and promising destination prompting them to come and leave behind the heartless domination of their arrogant oppressors.

And when these Polish emigrants arrived in America, they were once again identified, not as citizens of Poland, but citizens of Germany, Russia or Austria.

The World War that ended in 1918 was an historic event in Poland’s history. The bloodshed was over. The nation was finally free and independent.

For the purpose of international trade and its economic expansion, landlocked Poland gained access to the Baltic sea via ports like the Free City of Danzig (Gdansk) and Gdynia.

It became a nation with a navy and a merchant marine. It was cause for celebration and formation of new organizations like Szczepan Janeczko’s Liga Morska.

But the lifetime of the new nation was a limited one. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany joined with the Soviet Russian Communists of Jozef Stalin in 1939 to once again steal back the Polish nation for themselves.

The newest act of thievery lasted another fifty years until the fall of Communism in 1989.

“In those 200 years we were free for only twenty of them. We survived their bullets and bombs but we are still forced to keep fighting against a continuing campaign of malicious anti-Polish propaganda and false accusations,” said Janeczko.

Frank Milewski