Where did we come from?

Poland, situated in the middle of Europe, has had a long and turbulent history. It emerged from the mists of prehistory in 966, when Prince Mieszko accepted catholic faith and married a Czech princess, Dąbrówka.

Thousand years ago, in 1025 Mieszko’s son, Boleslaw “the Brave”, had the distinction of being the first of several crowned Polish kings. The crown, sent by the Pope from the Vatican, was the symbol of Poland’s formal recognition as a member of Western Christendom.

In the 14th century the king Casimir the Great, though the last of the Piast dynasty, was the first king of Poland to lay a permanent legal and institutional foundation for the monarchy. His grand nice, Jadwiga, was crowned as a Queen of Poland in Krakow in 1384. She then married the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Jagiello, and founded the Jagiellonian dynasty, which ruled both Poland and Lithuania for almost two centuries.  This arrangement was transformed into a permanent constitutional union in the sixteenth century, when the assembled Polish nobles and Lithuanian princes established a united, but dual states, with separate laws and administration, although jointly governed by an elected King and a common parliament. At the request of the nobility of Ukraine, the southern province of the Grand Duchy was also incorporated into the first Republic of Poland and Lithuania. For over two centuries, it prospered as the largest multicultural state in Europe, with a profusion of peoples, a variety of religions and many languages.

The eighteenth century saw the growth of absolute power in neighbouring countries and a crisis of social, economic and political life in the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Polish Democratic Constitution was passed in Warsaw on the 3rd of May 1791, the first such constitution in Europe and the second in the world. With the intention of saving Poland, it could never be fully introduced.  The three consecutive partitions of Poland, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, were caused by the compulsive desire of Russia to crush the Polish reforms. Prussia and Austria acquiesced. Poland of the time of Enlightenment had been oppressed by despotism and disappeared from the map of Europe for over 120 years.

Despite the complete abolishment of essential forms of independence and harsh persecutions after three unsuccessful uprisings, the inhabitants of the former Republic survived its fall and, with them, their culture, languages, religions, social and political attitudes. They formed the living bridge between Poland’s ancient past and the Second Republic of Poland, which emerged anew after the First World War in l918.

Twenty years later, the Second Republic of Poland was invaded by Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia. Poles fought for freedom on both western and eastern fronts during the Second World War and in the occupied homeland. 15% of the Polish population was lost and one third of Polish territory was annexed.  Betrayed by US and England in the Yalta Agreement, Poland was subsequently occupied by the Russian communist regime for the next 45 years. 

In 1989, thanks to the Solidarity movement, Poland regained her independence and instituted the Third Republic. Over 35 million citizens live within its present borders.

During the last two centuries millions of Poles have escaped the persecution of their homeland, in search of freedom and human dignity. Currently, almost 20 million people of Polish heritage live outside Poland.