VETERANS DAY: NOT ONLY AN AMERICAN HOLIDAY

NEWS from THE POLISH AMERICAN CONGRESS

DOWNSTATE NEW YORK DIVISION

177 Kent Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11222                                             (516) 352-7125                                        

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                    November 14, 2013

VETERANS DAY: NOT ONLY

   AN AMERICAN HOLIDAY

Brooklyn, N.Y. .. Frank Milewski, president of the Downstate New York Division

of the Polish American Congress (left), congratulates President Szczepan Janeczko

of the Sea League (Liga Morska) for continuing his organization’s annual observance

of Veterans Day.  In America’s Polish community, it is also celebrated as Poland’s

Independence Day. 

America’s older generation recalls Veterans Day was originally known as Armistice

Day.  It celebrated the end of World War I on November 11^th, 1918.

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 luring 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.

                                         END

Contact:  Frank Milewski

              (516) 352-7125

              pacdny@verizon.net