Has the use of the Polish language been discouraged in Buffalo and western New York? Although I am not aware of any official government ban on the use of Polish in Buffalo, immigrants to the United States a century ago were strongly encouraged to speak English, assimilate, and “Americanize.” This policy may not be true today with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of immigrants flowing illegally across the southern border into this country, something unimaginable to those arriving facing bureaucratic difficulties at Ellis Island at the turn of the last century.
However, it was certainly known that a complete ban on the use of the Polish language was the policy of those oppressive autocracies that divided Poland from the 18th century until the 20th century. The Russian Tsars pushed the process of “Russification” into the eastern part of Poland they occupied through the forced use of the Russian language and conversion to the Orthodox Christian faith, all the while demanding complete obedience to the Emperor.
In the German section of western Poland, with its main city Poznań (which the Germans called Posen), the occupiers hoped to eradicate Polish culture and language by imposing a policy known as “kulturkampf” or “cultural struggle” which was vigorously promoted by the Germans. The “Iron Chancellor” of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck, who hoped to eradicate the use of the Polish language and forcefully convert Roman Catholic Poles to Lutheranism.
In the supposedly more “benign” administration of southern Poland by the Austrians, the occupiers there crushed the allegedly “free” city of Krakow, and changed the name of the then Polish city of Lviv (now Ukrainian Lviv) to the German name Limburg. Although Polish was recognized as the official language of that empire, all government business was conducted in German, or, interestingly, Latin, in the Roman Catholic Church. But not Polish.
Why did the occupying powers spend so much time and effort trying to eradicate the Polish language in the territories they occupied that were once part of Poland? It seems that they were following the beliefs prevailing in Europe in the nineteenth century that language is the soul of the people and the nation. Once this is removed from the linguistic and cultural identity of a people, they are transformed into the culture and language of the dominant host occupier, and are thus eliminated as a unique civilization in their own right. Taking away a people’s language literally robs them of their lives and is a form of “ethnic cleansing.” The fierce resistance shown by the Poles to this cultural genocide thwarted this blatant attempt to eliminate them.
Self-imposed ethnic cleansing?
The Polish language was largely extinct in much of American Poland, including western New York. Polish can no longer be heard regularly on the streets of Broadway Fillmore or in Broadway Market as was common not long ago. As early as 1959, Am Pol Eagle realized that fewer and fewer Polish Americans, still proud of their heritage, could speak Polish. Dziennik Dla Wszystkich (Everyone’s Daily Newspaper) has become outdated in Buffalo. Then Matthew Belczynski, the new editor and publisher of the Am-Pol Eagle, wrote his paper in English. He realized that Poles could still express their ethnic pride even though they might not speak the language of their ancestors, other than knowing a few words.
In general, the immigrants who came from Poland in the 19th and early 20th centuries, or those coming after World War II or in the Solidarity era of the 1980s and more recently, all spoke Polish, but they wanted to learn English and become good and loyal. American citizens. They generally taught their children Polish at home. Third and fourth generation Polish Americans are largely no longer able to speak Polish; They did not learn it at home as their parents did. How many subsequent generations of Polish Americans say, “My father used to speak in Polish when they didn’t want us to know what they were saying.”
Polish language lessons at ST. Casimir
It is unfortunate that some in Poland in the late 1950s and 1960s deliberately wanted to impose their own “cultural struggle” to eliminate the Polish language. They foolishly said that if you were bilingual and learned Polish, you would speak English with a “Polish accent” and be laughed at or despised by the wider society. This illogical notion certainly had an “I know nothing” effect in the grade school I attended at St. Casimir Church in the Kaisertown section of Buffalo, a church that nonetheless prides itself on its Polish heritage today under the pastorate of Reverend Czesław, a Polonov devotee. Krysa, which strongly promotes Polish culture and language.
When I was a student at St. Casimir’s Grammar School, which had been closed for many years, the Polish-American Sisters taught us to read and write in English and Polish because most of the nuns were fluent in Polish. I remember learning from a Polish reader and a grammar book with illustrations that the Felicians assigned to us. In this simple Polish script, the picture of a “needle” was written with the letter “I” written in the Polish word for needle, “Igla”, and so on with other Polish letters and words with illustrations.
In the first few years at school, Polish-American children were well taught both English and Polish simultaneously! We even performed an entire play in Polish in the school hall where we played with the barnyard animals. Even though I had a small role, I had to deliver lines in Polish identifying me as “Krowa” or cow in Polish. (I was a fat kid, and the ladies in the boys’ section at Sattler’s would classify the word “husky.”) When you are young, learning a foreign language is much easier than learning another language when you are older. Pastor Bronisław Majrowski was so impressed by our all-Polish play that he gave us time off from school the next day.
Unfortunately, after a few years, Polish language instruction at St. Casimir’s School was completely abolished. A group of angry parents stormed the principal’s office demanding that all Polish language instruction for their children be canceled because it would “delay” their ability to communicate properly in English. They were so vociferous in their ignorance, that the teaching of the Polish language was “stifled in the cradle” so to speak at school. Instead of facing a mass exodus from primary school, Polish language instruction was halted at that time. A tragedy for sure.
How much richer our relationship with the Polish people would be if more of us could speak to them in their native language. After all, Poles and most Europeans, unlike the majority of Americans, can speak many foreign languages, which will expand their intelligence and make it easier for them to communicate with the world. Fortunately, people can still learn Polish, and their children may learn at a Polish Saturday School in Buffalo. But for most of us, the use of Polish is primitive at best, or a faded memory, severing a unique connection to the land of our ancestors.