A History of the Polish Americans by John.J. Bukowczyk

Author:John.J. Bukowczyk [Bukowczyk, John.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9781351535205
Google: KyIuDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-12T04:34:32+00:00

5

THE DECLINE OF THE URBAN ETHNIC ENCLAVE

Polish America Transformed, WW II-Present

The inhabitants of these [Polish] areas realize that even with financial considerations aside, they can never recreate their “village” in the sterile suburbs. … It is one of the reasons why resistance to the Blacks has been so strong and angry. They represent the spearhead of the outside world which threatens to destroy the community.

—Thaddeus Radzialowski, “The View From a Polish Ghetto: Some Observations on the First One Hundred Years in Detroit” (1974)

Just as immigrants in America’s Polish enclaves had found that they could not turn the clock back to a faraway village world, the working-class Polish-Americans, who had forged their own ethnic blue-collar way of life, discovered they could not make time stand still. On September 1, 1939, America’s Poles heard news on their radios that ended Polonia’s brief respite of stability and insularity: Nazi armies had invaded Poland from the west. Two weeks later, Soviet forces would overrun its eastern borders. The reports that followed in the next three weeks left Polish-Americans little hope. The Luftwaffe easily dominated Poland’s skies. The German Panzer divisions’ 2,600 tanks faced only 150 Polish tanks and, in many places, only lightly armed infantry and cavalry. On September 27, a bombed-out Warsaw fell. The next day, Poland’s conquerers chopped the defeated country into two parts. Thus began the Second World War. (See Map 3.)

Map 3 Partition of Poland, 1939.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.