Poland Honors 1980's Voice of the N.Y. Polish American Congress

Acting as media spokesman for the Congress, Nadrowski,  spearheaded a series of public rallies and demonstrations in New York City against the violation of human rights in Poland..
 
He and the rest of the Polish American Congress protested Communist brutality and repression with demonstrations at the United Nations, the Soviet and Polish Missions to the U.N. and the Polish Consulate when it was still under Communist direction.
 
Nadrowski is shown here wearing Poland’s Officer’s Cross awarded to him for his efforts while Frank Milewski, president of the N.Y. PAC, looks on.  Unavailable for the photo was Auschwitz survivor Michael Preisler who was president of the Congress during the Solidarity years.
 
In the American Revolution, “the shot heard ‘round the world” at Lexington & Concord led to the birth of a free and independent United States of America with Gen. George Washington as the new nation’s first president.
 
Something similar happened in 1980 in the Polish shipyard in Gdansk when Lech Walesa headed a series of labor strikes which led to free elections and the fall of Communism.  Mr. Walesa then became the president of the new Poland.
 
But the Polish people had a tough and painful fight before the Communists relented and agreed to the elections.
 
On orders from Moscow, the Warsaw regime terrorized the people through martial law, beatings, arrests, shootings and murder.
 
President Ronald Reagan, the Pope, American labor leaders and much of the western world gave their support to the Polish people in this difficult period.
 
Under the leadership of the Polish American Congress, New York’s Polish community became deeply involved in sending material help and providing moral encouragement to their relatives and friends back home.
 
As a Republican district leader and former candidate for the U.S. Congress, as well as an ardent anti-Communist, Nadrowski was able to passionately articulate the concerns of all Americans for the success of the ongoing struggle of the Poles to achieve the freedom of which they were so long deprived.
 
Nadrowski’s message of hope and support to the striking workers of Poland was broadcast by American media and agencies like the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe.
 
Zygmunt Staszewski, today a member of the Polish American Congress, was a Solidarity leader in Wroclaw who was rounded up and jailed when the Communist regime surprised the country with a declaration of martial law.
 
Sitting in jail, Staszewski and his fellow workers were able to assemble a makeshift radio and tune in what the outside world was saying about the Communist crackdown.  Messages like the ones coming from the Polish American Congress “gave us hope and encouragement,” he said.
 
Michael Preisler was president of the N.Y. Congress when it organized and conducted multi-year demonstrations to back the Polish strikers.
 
Preisler fought against the Germans in World War II and ended up in Auschwitz for it.  Whether in Poland or after he came to the United States, he never stopped fighting Poland’s enemies.  He stood with Nadrowski at every public demonstration the Congress held.
 
His has been a lifetime “dedicated to the cause of a free and independent Poland,” said Frank Milewski, the PAC’s current
president.
 
After this goal was finally achieved with the Polish elections of June, 1989, the rest of the Communist-controlled countries in Eastern Europe started collapsing like a row of Dominoes.  The Berlin Wall came down five months later in November.
 
"A German joke" is what Preisler calls the attempt to ignore what Solidarity started in Poland in 1980 and to credit the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 as the event which caused the downfall of Communism.
 
“They just can’t seem to break that old and nasty German habit of trying to steal whatever belongs to Poland,” he said.
 
Contact:  Frank Milewski
pacdny@verizon.net