membership in Światpol.30 “Regarding ourselves as an inseparable component of the great American nation,” the statement of the American delegation announced, “we take an active and creative part in every walk of American life, thus contributing to boosting the name of Poland in our country.”31 After returning to the United States, Świetlik further justified his position: “Polonia in America is neither a Polish colony nor a national minority but a component part of the Great American Nation, proud, however, of its Polish extraction and careful to make the young generation love everything Polish.”32 Miecislaus Haiman, a prominent Polish-American historian, summed up the controversy provoked by American Polonia’s refusal to become a part of Światpol: “In the eyes of the Poles in Poland and in other countries we are still only Poles while in fact we are already Americans of Polish extraction.”33
The Great Depression hampered to some extent the process of assimilation by blocking social mobility and forcing the second generation back into the old ethnic neighborhoods, where Polish Americans, “cut off from the homogenizing influences of a consumption society, . . . once again clung to their cultural forms.”34 First and foremost, the depression meant hard times, unemployment, and social turmoil. Second-generation Polish Americans responded to adversity by pooling community resources and relying on family economic units, but they refused to be mere victims. In 1935 Polish women in Hamtramck, Michigan, took their protest against skyrocketing meat prices to the streets. Others actively participated in strikes and union drives, which produced a number of Polish-American union leaders, such as Leo Krzycki, Stanley Nowak, Bolesław Gebert, and Stella Nowicki. The radicalizing impact of the depression was demonstrated also by the growing membership of Poles in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). By the end of World War II, the CIO included about 6 million members, of whom approximately six hundred thousand were Polish.35 Finally, the New Deal cemented Polonia’s traditional adherence to the Democratic Party, even though the participation of Polish Americans in party politics remained limited.36 The assimilation process of the 1920s and 1930s affected the broad masses of working-class Polish Americans, resulting in their way of life being “‘made in America,’ just as the coal that they mined or the steel ingots that they rolled.”37
The outbreak of the war revived the Polish communities in the United States. American Polonia, although internally not homogenous, contributed generously to humanitarian causes, which included support for Polish refugees and prisoners as well as (whenever possible) for the Polish population in Poland. Polish Americans also took an interest in international matters that could affect Poland, and in 1944 they formed a powerful lobby: the Polish American Congress (PAC). After the end of the war, American Polonia worked for a change in immigration laws and for the admittance of European displaced persons to the United States. Polonia’s activism worked within the American framework to a greater extent than it had during the previous world war. For young Polish-American men and women, military service meant accelerated assimilation.38 After the war, taking advantage of generous veterans benefits and the booming economy, Polish Americans displayed noticeable upward social mobility. Greater numbers of second-generation Polish-American males moved into white-collar occupations, and women, who had entered the work force during the depression and the war years, tended to stay there. Finally, many second-generation Polish Americans left ethnic communities for the suburbs, “for a slice of the promised ‘good life’ and, frankly, a chance to leave their sometimes embarrassing hyphenate ethnic past far behind.”39
During the war Polish Americans were keenly aware of the plight of Polish refugees scattered around the globe and carried out successful charitable actions through a variety of organizations. They were one of the first ethnic groups that heralded the cause of European displaced persons and lobbied tirelessly for a change in the immigration laws, which would allow their admission to the United States. After the 1948 Displaced Persons Act had been passed, American Polonia mobilized itself for an unprecedented resettlement effort. Throughout the war and the early postwar years, Polish Americans revived their long tradition of activism on behalf of Poland. Decrying Poland’s loss of independence at Yalta and responding to international Cold War pressures, the majority of Polonia displayed vivid anticommunist sentiments. As U.S. citizens, they aspired to leadership in the struggle for Poland, and the DP cause became one of the important points of their mission.
The arrival of political refugees, instead of providing anticipated fresh reinforcements for Polonia, brought tension and conflict between the two groups. The refugees based their exile identity on the common experience of life in independent Poland before the war and on their wartime suffering and struggle. Neither of these experiences had been shared by American Polonia. Tensions heightened also for other reasons, some linked to the finer points of the exile mission and others connected to the social characteristics of the two populations. Lack of adequate knowledge about the history of each group, competition for political and cultural leadership, level of assimilation, class differences, social mobility, and the issue of loyalty to the Polish government in exile and to the rest of the diaspora were all factors that contributed to the friction.
Most significantly, the new arrivals did not consider themselves simply new immigrants, but rather a special category of immigrants: political refugees. This distinction had been adopted during the war and especially during the DP period of increased politicization of the refugee masses. The refugees counterposed the concept of political exile and that of the earlier economic “emigration for bread.” Tapping the Polish Romantic tradition, they considered their political motivation a nobler and more legitimate reason for emigration. In their own eyes, it gave them a respectable identity, one easily compatible with the inspiring legacy of historical struggle for Poland’s independence. Armed with claims to European and Polish high culture—supposedly superior to the plebeian roots of American civilization—the refugees used the exile mission to ensure the survival of their Polish identity. For example, the First Convention of the New Emigration, which took place in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in September 1950, adopted a resolution explicitly stating its character: “The new emigrants regard themselves as a political emigration and strongly denounce tendencies to define them as stateless or economic emigrants.”40 Stanisław Kwaśniewski, the author of the 1948 poem “Polscy Kombatanci,” put the matter even more succinctly. “They are coming for freedom, not dollars,” he wrote about the postwar arrivals, sharply distinguishing them from the turn-of-the-century peasant economic immigrants.41
For these political refugees the exile mission provided justification for their refusal to return to Poland and called for action on behalf of the homeland, which had been subdued by the communist oppressor. Poland’s independence was central to both political and social thinking, and one’s work for Poland defined the measure of one’s patriotism.42 Political action focused on lobbying Western governments and public opinion through constant reminders of the Polish nation’s historical significance and its contribution to victory in World War II. The West was to be warned against the dangers of communism and informed of the hardships of life in Poland under the communist regime, for which those who had condoned Yalta were held responsible. Émigré Poles believed that they had the right to represent Polish interests in the West and that the communists’ claim to power should be officially delegitimized. Some of their more detailed demands included the repudiation of Yalta, the return of Western recognition to the Polish government in exile, international guarantees for Poland’s border with Germany, the return of Poland’s eastern territories lost to the Soviet Union, an investigation of the Katyń massacre, and the release of political prisoners.43 The responsibility of this work for Poland fell on all exiles. While the exile leaders conducted direct political lobbying, the rank-and-file refugees attempted to inform and influence Western public opinion. In order to increase the effectiveness of their political action, the exiles recognized the need to cooperate with older immigrant waves and strove to preserve ties to the entire postwar diaspora, both through organizational and personal means.
This focus on the issues of the homeland and the diaspora had added expediency in the first decade after the war, because of the unstable political situation. Many exiles believed that their sojourn in foreign countries would be
