Membership

In August 1980, Lech Wałęsa, an electrician and worker dissident, scaled the walls of the Lenin Shipyards in Gdańsk in order to join his angry co-workers. Workers throughout Poland were striking against the incompetent and unjust policies of the communist regime. They demanded economic justice and human rights, and trade unions independent of the Polish United Workers (i.e., communist) Party. The strikers hung pictures of Our Lady of Częstochowa and of Pope John Paul II on the gates of the Lenin Yards. These powerful religious and patriotic symbols broadcast to a mesmerized world precisely where the authentic values and popular convictions of Polish society lay. The strikers lined up to confess to Catholic priests, and scorned the party bureaucracy. After nearly thirty-five years in power, the communist party-state had failed to win the allegiance of the very class that it claimed to represent. When the Gdańsk Agreement was signed on August 31, 1980, this ideological defeat was publicly acknowledged. The party-state admitted that “labor union operations” had not come up to worker expectations, and conceded to the workers the organization of “new, self-governing unions, as authentic representatives of the working class.”

The subsequent establishment of NSZZ Solidarność (Independent, Self-governing, Free Trade Union—Solidarity) on September 17, 1980, was a new stage in the non-violent struggle for human rights within the Soviet Empire. The mere existence of Solidarity, which rapidly grew to nearly 10,000,000 members, and of rural Solidarity, with another 3,000,000 followers, threatened communist rule in Poland and elsewhere in the Soviet Empire. The imposition of martial law on December 13, 1981, by General Wojciech Jaruzelski was an attempt to stem the tide, to crush Solidarity, and to restore the old order. President Ronald Reagan of the United States protested by imposing economic sanctions in a calibrated effort to compel Warsaw to abolish martial law and to restore Solidarity and human rights. Finally, in 1989, faced with a permanently failing economy, with an opposition supported by the Polish Diaspora and western trade unions and governments, and with Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost, Jaruzelski agreed to the re-legalization of Solidarity and to postwar Poland's first semi-free elections.

World War II was a trial by fire for Poland. While in the 19th century Poles resisted efforts to denationalize them, during World War II physical extermination threatened the country's inhabitants. When the six years of brutal occupation were over in May 1945, 6,028,000 citizens, Gentiles and Jews, had perished, an estimated 22% of the prewar population. Only 10% of the country's dead died in military action. The remainder perished in executions, during deportations, as a result of the general deterioration of wartime existence, or in concentration or death camps. Nazi racial policies considered Jews, Slavs, and Gypsies “subhumans,” and Polish Jewry was almost entirely extinguished by the application of modern production line technology to death. Jews were killed only because they were Jews, but Nazi terror stalked every citizen. The situation was also perilous for those in Soviet-occupied eastern Poland between 1939 and 1941. As many as 1,500,000 inhabitants perished in executions, during massive deportations to Siberia, and in the brutal slave labor camps of the eastern Soviet Union.

Poles resisted. The political and military leaders organized a Government- in-Exile, which moved to London in 1940; an army-in-exile; and a civilian and military underground resistance in the country. Poland was a member of the Allied coalition, a signatory of the Atlantic Charter, and declared eligible for Lend Lease aid. Until Hitler turned on his Soviet ally, Poland's position within the Allied camp was clear. She was the innocent victim of aggression for whom Britain and France had declared war against Germany. Poland expected to regain her independence when the war ended, recover her prewar territories, and be compensated for German aggression.

Poland's political position changed dramatically in June 1941, when German forces invaded the Soviet Union. Geopolitical necessity made Stalin a welcome ally in the struggle against Nazi Germany. As the war progressed, the likelihood of the USSR having a deciding voice in the fate of postwar Eastern Europe increased. In the Spring of 1943, the USSR broke relations with the Polish Government-in-Exile over the question of responsibility for the massacre of Polish officers and non-commissioned officers at the Katyń Forest in the Spring of 1940.

Songs Sung by Choirs at Concerts of the National and International Conventions of the Polish Singers Alliance of America

PSAA Districts and Choirs—1999

Marsz Wyższej Szkoły Św. Trójcy

[The March of Holy Trinity High School]

Stawajmy bracia społem,

Otoczmy gmach ten kołem!

Rozum i wola nas utrwali,

Rwijmy tu nauki kwiat!

Polska to twierdza, na jej szali,

Zaważy przyszłości świat!

Niechaj do celu nas prowadzi

Pilność i praca i trud,

Szkole tej Trójcy zawsze radzi,

Stworzyć tu możemy cud!

Ducha polskości kształćmy,

Kochajmy naród nasz!

Za wiarą ojców walczmy,

Nadszedł wolności czas!

A gdy dorośniem starsi,

Staniem jak jeden mąż!

‘Chluba Polaków’ Matkie

Skroń wieńczyć będą wcięż!

(October 1913)

[Brothers stand together,

Surround this building with a circle!

Reason and will strengthen us,

Here we pick the flower of learning!

Poland the fortress, and on its scales

Weighs the future of the world!

Let diligence, labor, and toil

Lead us to our aim,

Trinity School always counsels,

Here we can accomplish miracles!

We educate ourselves in the spirit of Polishness,

We love our nation!

We fight for the faith of our fathers,

So that the time of freedom will arrive!

And when we come of age,

We stand like one husband!

‘The pride of Poles’ Mothers

Will still crown this temple.]

Nasze Trójcowo

[Our Trinity]

Hej naprzód nam w górę, lśni droga orłowa

Wskazali ją Ojce i Matki;

Jak oni ponisiem nasz sztandar Trójcowa,

I w złote przystroim go kwiatki.

O, cześć Wam, Ojcowie i Matki!

Dłoń Wasza ustrzegła sztandaru,

My dzieci, dziś skroń swą stroimy w laur kwiatki,

I żyjem w pokoju dziś czaru!

Przegrzmiały już gromy, ucichły dziś burze,

Minęły dni walki i znoju,

Dziś kwitnę nam białe lilije i róże,

My wianki wić możem w spokoju.

O, cześć Wam, Ojcowie i Matki!

Wasz trud, znój i czynz i słowo,

Nasz sztandar przybrały w lilije i bratki,

I wzniosły kochane Trójcowo!

My dzieci w rodziców wstępujem dziś ślady,

Wasz szstandar bierzemy do ręki!

Zdeptamy z ochotą i węże i gady,

Za wodą pójdziemy piosenki.

Kolebką jest naszą Trójcowo!

Kochamy je mocno i szczerze;

Pracować dlań będziem i sercem i głową,

Ojczyżnie wciąż wierni i wierze!

[Hey forward to the mountain, the eagle road glistening

Fathers and Mothers pointed it out;

How they raise our Trinity banner,

And dress it in gold flowers.

On June 11, 1888, a group of “Polish youth in Chicago” motivated by “a love for national song” organized the Chopin Choir, a singing society in Holy Cross Parish. One of the young immigrants, Antoni Małłek, had received an appeal from Warsaw urging the “cultivation and elevation of our native Polish song” and “the enrichment of our Polish arts by the promotion of contests for new musical compositions.” Responding to this call, these young men also began planning a national organization of Polish singing societies to embrace Polish immigrants “wherever they live.”

The President of the Organizing Committee was Stanisław Pliszka, and his associates were Franciszek Romanowski, Wojciech Kowalski, Michał Gacki, and Małłek. The Reverend Dominik Majer of Saint Adalbert's Parish in St. Paul, Minnesota, provided advice and encouragement, and the Committee dispatched appeals to “patriotic youth” in other Polish settlements to organize singing societies. At the Committee's first organizational meeting on December 4, 1888, Małłek, on Majer's advice, moved to organize a national singing society—Związek Śpiewaków Polskich w Ameryce [The Polish Singers Alliance of America— PSAA]. The members of the Organizing Committee, who all belonged to the Chopin Choir, remained the same. However, they were now joined by Milwaukee's Harmonia Choir, which was designated Choir No. 2 of the nascent Alliance. At the next meeting, on February 11, 1889, the Harmonia Choir of La Salle, Illinois, joined the initiative, receiving No. 3 as its organizational designation. Those attending the February meeting also decided to call the first convention of the Polish Singers Alliance of America, setting as the time and place May 13, 1889, at Albrecht Kowalski's Hall in Chicago.

The convention minutes do not tell us how many “patriotic youth” gathered in Chicago that May 13th, but they reveal the organizers’ enthusiasm and determination. The Convention opened with the singing of the patriotic hymn “Boże coś Polskę,” after which a congratulatory telegram from Reverend Majer was read. The delegates adopted a constitution, voted a fifty-cent initiation fee for every new member, and elected their first officers, including Konstanty Małłek [Antoni's brother] as President; Marcin Zyburtowski, Vice-President; Edward Ignacy Słupecki, Secretary, Maksymilijan Kucera, Treasurer, and Antoni Małłek as Director of Song.

Guest Artists and Selections Performed at National and International Conventions of the Polish Singers Alliance of America, 1905–1998

The period from the turn of the century up to the outbreak and through to the end of World War I was a time of growth and excitement for the immigrant Polish community in America. This was the zenith of the Great Peasant Emigration from the Polish lands. Emigration across the Atlantic to North America, now primarily from Russian and Austrian Poland, peaked. According to the annual reports of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1,059,043 Polish immigrants arrived between 1889 and 1919. While the number may be an undercount, the available information confirms that the new arrivals were largely rural peasants. They settled in the older immigrant communities of the Midwest, but also established their presence in other regions, including the Middle Atlantic states and in southern New England. While most lacked a formal education, they knew why they were leaving their native villages, they knew their destination, and they intended to improve their economic situation once they found a place of residence and work.

A small influx of political émigrés accompanied the economic immigrants. This was a consequence of increasing political turmoil in the Russian and Austrian Empires, especially the Revolution of 1905. The arrival of a new generation of émigrés and the developments in partitioned Poland intensified homeland politics within the immigrant community in America. Adherents of Polish political currents competed with each other for influence among the immigrants and their organizations. The outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 and the revolutionary events that swept the Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Poland in 1905 and 1906 provoked an intense debate within American Polonia as to how to respond. Polish socialists, whose influence was ascending within the Polish National Alliance, exhorted American Polonia to abet the revolution. The PNA, however, temporized, ultimately adopting the conciliatory line advanced by Roman Dmowski's National Democratic Party.

These debates were a reflection of the increasing politicalization of the immigrant community for homeland politics, i.e., the restoration of Polish independence. However, while immigrant nationalists and socialists sought to draw attention to the immigration's importance in homeland politics as the “fourth partition,” immigrant leaders also sought to attract attention to the community's presence in America.

The decade since 1989 is a new era in Polish American relations. It opened with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, and culminated in 1999 with the entry of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. When Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek visited the United States in July 1998, just two months after the United States Senate ratified NATO expansion, he was greeted by President William Clinton as the leader of “America's newest ally.” The Polish diaspora's dream for an independent and secure Poland was in its grasp. For two centuries the diaspora kept “the Polish question” before the West. The opening refrain of the Polish national anthem, “Poland is not lost as long as we live,” possesses a powerful meaning for Poles at home and in the diaspora. Homeland politics was an element that defined Polonia communities, and in Polonia as in Poland, the arts served the cause of independence. For a century, homeland politics and national aspirations shaped the Polish Singers Alliance as an ideological organization. For eighty of the one hundred years, from 1889 to 1918 and from 1939 to 1989, the ideological struggle was political, for a free Poland. Only in the inter-war years, when there was a free Poland, did American Polonia organizations pursue ideological work for different reasons. Americanization, assimilation, and restrictive immigration laws raised questions about whether the original immigrant community was viable, and what American Polonia would look like as the second and succeeding Americanized generations emerged. The cultural struggle attempted to limit the losses to Americanization and to maximize the native heritage through its preservation and propagation.

The original immigrants have passed on, and their descendants are properly Americans of Polish origin. Since 1939, smaller waves of political émigrés, soldier exiles, displaced persons, consumer immigrants, and a Solidarity immigration have arrived. Contemporary American Polonia embraces the generational descendants of first immigrants, and the newer immigrants. Advances in technology and communication, which make contact with Poland instantaneous, and profound political and economic changes in Eastern Europe, raise questions about the Diaspora's future role.

1—Chicago, IL—May 13, 1889, at Wojciech Kowalski Hall

2—Milwaukee, WI—June 30, 1890, at Kościuszko Hall

3—Chicago, IL—October 26, 1891, at Wojciech Kowalski Hall

4—Grand Rapids, MI—1892, at the Polish National Hall

5—Chicago, IL—September 5, 1893, at Nalepiński Hall

6—Milwaukee, WI—October 14, 1895, at the Hall of the Kościuszko Guard

7—Milwaukee, WI—September 7, 1896

8—Grand Rapids, MI

PSAA

9—St. Paul, MN—July 1898

10—Chicago, IL—August 1900

11—Milwaukee, WI—1902

UPSAA

9—Chicago, IL—September 1898

10—Bay City, MI—August 1899

11—Detroit, MI—September 1900

12—Buffalo, NY—August 1901

13—Chicago, IL—August/September 1902

Reunification Convention:

Milwaukee, WI—September 7 and 8, 1903

15—New York, NY—September 3–6, 1905

16—Cleveland, OH—August 25–28, 1907

17—Baltimore, MD—May 8, 1910

18—Chicago, IL—September 11–14, 1913

19—Pittsburgh, PA—June 28–29, 1916

20—Buffalo, NY—May 1918

* “Emergency Convention” [Zjazd przyspieszony] Chicago, IL—May

30–31 and June 1, 1919

21—Detroit, MI—May 27–30, 1923

22—South Bend, IN—May 30–31 and June 1–2, 1926

23—Cleveland, OH—May 1929 24—New York, NY—May 26, 1934

25—Chicago, IL—May 29–31 and June 1, 1937

26—Utica, NY—May 24–27, 1940

27—Cleveland, OH—May 20–22, 1944

28—New York, NY—May 29–31 and June 1, 1947

29—Detroit, MI—May 27–29, 1950

30—Buffalo, NY—May 28–31, 1953

31—New York, NY—May 31 and June 1–3, 1956

32—Chicago, IL—May 28–31, 1959

33—Syracuse, NY—May 24–27, 1962

34—Cleveland, OH—May 27–30, 1965

35—New York, NY—May 30, 31 and June 1–2, 1968

36—Chicago, IL—May 27–30, 1971

37—Detroit, MI—May 23–27, 1974

38—Buffalo, NY—May 26–29, 1977

39—New York, NY—May 22–25, 1980

40—Syracuse, NY—May 26–29, 1983

41—Cleveland, OH—May 22–25, 1986

42—Hamilton, Ontario—May 24–28, 1989

43—Detroit, MI—May 21–24, 1992

44—New York, NY—May 25–28, 1995

45—Chicago, IL—May 21–24, 1998

The reappearance in 1918 of an independent Polish state on Europe's map fulfilled the dreams of generations of Poles both in the homeland and in the Diaspora. Unexpectedly, however, the existence of a sovereign Poland compelled the Diaspora to confront questions about its future. Was one to return to Poland, or to remain abroad in a foreign country? Political émigrés active in homeland politics, and who believed that they would not have emigrated had Poland not been partitioned, now faced a decision about returning to the homeland. So did those who had left for economic reasons. Some 96,000 American Poles did re-emigrate between 1920 and 1925, but many returned because the new Poland proved to be “somehow not quite like we want her to be, like we understood her and imagined her.” Disillusioned with Polish politics, daunted by lost economic investments, and feeling appreciated only for their dollars, Polish-American re-emigrants came to realize that their future was in America. The five Polish emigration congresses held between 1918 and 1925, in a broadly symbolic way, reflected this mental shift. In the 1918 Congress at Detroit, the American Poles enthusiastically greeted the new Poland. While asserting their loyalty to America, they asserted, “we do not have the right to forget about the Fatherland.” However, at the fifth Congress in 1925, the delegates gathered under the banner of “the immigration for the immigration.”

A number of factors prompted the Poles in America to give priority now to their own needs and to their future in America. The vast majority in fact decided to remain in America, and once they decided, they became more involved in community life and ethnic organizations. The second and third generations were coming of age, but in an environment of rapidly advancing Americanization. Would the children and grandchildren of the original immigrants retain their ancestral language and customs, and continue to support the organizations and institutions established by the first generation? Advancing Americanization was but one part of a dilemma about the survival of the Polish-American community and its organizational infrastructure. Racist immigration legislation adopted by the U.S. Congress in 1921 and 1924 severely restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe and ended the age of mass European migration to the United States.

The origin of Polish music in America is traced to the appearance of Felix Yaniewicz, an esteemed violinist, conductor, and composer who visited the young American republic sometime in the early nineteenth century. In 1805, Yaniewicz published in Philadelphia a song, “The Birth Day of Freedom,” to celebrate the American victory in the war with Tripoli. He also published a rondo, “The Indian War Whoop,” and his works appeared in several collections of music published in the United States. Polish musical activities increased following the arrival of émigrés who made their way to New World after the defeat of the November 1830 Insurrection. This small political immigration landed when there were neither Polish settlements nor organizations, nor an organized Polonia. Many insurgents were gentry. They possessed some education, and established the first Polish organizations in America. Among these exiles were a few talented composers and musicians. While their compatriots employed their cultural talents to propagate the cause of Polish independence in Europe, the new arrivals did likewise in America. Adam Kurek dedicated marches to the leaders of the November Insurrection, and Edward Bohuszewicz composed waltzes and mazurkas with romantic titles like The Polish Pilgrim and The Memory of a Polish Exile, as well as a Selection of Polish Aires. Polish patriotic songs such as The Polonez of the Third of May and The Varsovienne [Warszawianka] were also published, and Paweł Sobolewski translated and printed, “Poland is not lost.” However, these early political exiles were too small to imprint anything more than a faint, albeit positive, image of Poland upon the popular American consciousness.

The January 1863 Insurrection renewed political activity on Poland's behalf, and, after the Insurrection's defeat, a new generation of political émigrés found their way to the United States. At the same time, the growing rural immigration from partitioned Poland fundamentally changed the character of Polish life in America. As the immigrants congregated in cities, they organized the parishes and societies that became the infrastructure of American Polonia. And as the immigrants developed their social life, their inner needs and emotions found their necessary expression in cultural activities.

On May 30, 1995, The New York Times reviewed a New York performance of the internationally known composer, Henryk Górecki. Apart from the program, the reviewer was intrigued by what brought Górecki to New York. The composer, who had declined invitations from prestigious ensembles, did not perform in New York at a conventional concert hall or with famous musicians. Rather, he appeared at the Marriott Marquis Hotel “on a program otherwise devoted to amateur Polish- American choruses and dancers.” The occasion was the 44th international convention of the Polish Singers Alliance of America.

The reviewer commented favorably upon Górecki's performance, and then tried to explain Górecki's presence. The event had a certain “bittersweet charm.” There were choirs in folk costume and others in contemporary concert dress; the singing and conducting were “longer on enthusiasm than on such niceties as unified attacks and releases”; and the piano accompaniments were “often slipshod.” However, the reviewer concluded, “the point here is safeguarding a tradition, not giving streamlined performances.”

These last remarks captured the essence of the story. They explain Górecki's tribute to the Polish Singers Alliance and the Alliance's purpose. Since its founding in 1889, the Alliance's mission is “to propagate and cultivate Polish national song among the Poles in America,” to acquaint Poles and Americans with the works of Polish composers, and, “through song, to sustain the old-Polish love (staropolska miłość) of the Fatherland within the Polish-American immigration.” In the history of the Polish immigration in America, the Alliance was an “ideological organization.”

Ideological organizations were, and remain, common to the history of immigration to America. This was especially true in the decades between the American Civil War and World War I, when waves of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe migrated to the New World. In the Polish immigrant community, as in other immigrant and ethnic communities, the ideological organization had a patriotic purpose. Karol Wachtl, an early historian of the Polish Roman Catholic Union, summarized its mission as “the elevation of patriotic consciousness, the preservation of national separateness (odrębność), resistance to denationalization, [and] maintaining spiritual links with the Fatherland.”