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Introduction  
Chicago,” Sophie Nadrowska explained in a letter to her parents in Poland in 1890, “is Poland in perfection.” For generations of Polish immigrants and their descendants, Illinois has been a place to call home: perhaps not always perfect, yet still welcoming. Since the early nineteenth century, Poles have made the state their home, and in turn they have shaped the history and character of Illinois. They settled in the industrial neighborhoods of Chicago and its environs, in Joliet and Rockford, in the coal-mining towns of south-central Illinois, and on farms across the state. In 2010, an estimated 1 million Polish Americans lived in Illinois, making up 8 percent of all state residents.
 
Polish immigrants have made Illinois home for almost two centuries. Chicago has been home to one of the densest urban concentrations of Poles anywhere outside of Poland. There is a saying that Chicago is the second largest Polish city in the world, after Warsaw, Poland’s capital. Although this is not entirely cor­rect (at least as of this writing), the popularity of this “fact” is a reminder of the outsized role played by Illinois in the conscious­ness of Poles and Polish Americans. Many of the most prominent Polish American organizations are headquartered in Chicago. In Poland itself, “Czikago” is, as much as “Nowy Jork,” synonymous with America.
 
With such a long and storied background, one would imagine a small shelf of books surveying the history Poles in Illinois or even covering the contributions of Poles to Chicago. Yet, the present volume is the first effort at writing such a history. There are many excellent specialized studies on aspects of the Polish experience in Chicago but no overall history aside from a memorial book produced for city’s centennial in 1937 and a popular history/cookbook. For Polish communities beyond Chicago, aside from parish jubilee books, there is virtually nothing. Standard histories of the state make only passing mention of the Polish presence. Although Poles played an outsized role in shaping Chicago’s physical and cultural history, standard histories of the Windy City again provide little detail other than to note the size of the Polish population and its role in heavy industry.
 
But perhaps this is not as surprising as it seems. The Polish presence in Illinois and in the state’s leading city is so large and so integral to the identity of the state and of Chicago that it has become invisible and taken for granted. Moreover, there is no single “Polish community” encompassing Illinois or even Chi­cago. Polish immigrants created many distinct communities in the state that were often so complete and intensive in their develop­ment that they sought and needed little input from other Polish communities, let alone their neighbors of different backgrounds. The inward focus of so many of the Illinois communities created by Polish immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries made it hard for them mobilize politically and elect their members to public office. The later arrival of waves of more politically conscious Polish refugees in the second half of the twentieth century did little to change that. Despite the massive Polish presence in Chicago since the 1880s, and much to the frus­tration of those who sought to be leaders of Polonia (the Polish community in America), the city never had a Polish mayor and probably never will. That inward focus, however, created a dense and rich world of institutions—banks and restaurants, hospitals and orphanages, churches and schools, publishing houses and recording studios, artistic societies and sports leagues, unions and social service agencies. Poles shaped the physical environment of the state from modest working-class neighborhoods to factories to massive neo-Gothic churches whose splendor rivals those of the Old World.
 
The world created by Polish immigrants exists like a kind of parallel universe to the more familiar history of Illinois. Its history is little known outside of interested historians and history enthusiasts. Sadly, it is often little known by those whose forebears built it and breathed it into life. The task of this book is to begin to tell this story and provide a window into a rich and important but overlooked part of the state’s history.  
 
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  Poles who have settled in Illinois came in several distinct waves from a Poland that was at the heart of modern Europe’s fiercest political convulsions. Poland is situated in the geographical center of Europe, between the southern coast of the Baltic Sea and the Carpathian Mountains. Poles speak a Slavic dialect—a western branch of the largest ethnolinguistic family in Europe. This eth­nolinguistic core mixed freely with a host of ancient and modern peoples in central Europe—including Germans to the west and other Slavic groups to the south and east such as Slovaks, Czechs, Ukrainians, and Ruthenians. Poles had close and sometimes frac­tious historical links to Lithuanians. At one time, the country was a haven for the world’s largest Jewish populations and one of the world’s most northerly Muslim communities. Poland’s location made it a crossroads for peoples, cultures, and ideas from across Eurasia. Its culture and its predominant Roman Catholic faith tied it to the West, but throughout much of its history, Poland gazed East.
 
A Polish monarchy emerged by the middle of the tenth century and expanded to include much of what is now modern Poland by the early eleventh century. Thereafter, a long period of feu­dal fragmentation and external invasion ensured that the coun­try remained politically divided. Under the reigns of Władysław Elbow-high (1261-1333) and his son Casimir the Great (1310-70), the Polish monarchy revived and its boundaries expanded, be­coming an important regional power. In 1386, Poland entered a dynastic union with the neighboring Grand Duchy of Lithuania, creating the largest single country in Europe, stretching from the shores of the Baltic to the Black Sea. By the early 1500s, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had developed a unique form of constitutional monarchy with limited royal power, an elective king, and a strong parliament made up of a large and diverse class of service gentry who constituted 10 to 15 percent of the population. The limited powers of the monarch ensured that in an age when kings sought to impose religious uniformity on their lands, Poland remained a place of relative toleration and provided a haven for numerous dissenter groups. While Moscow was still a provincial backwater, Polish kings, bishops, and nobles made cities like Kraków, Warsaw, Wilno, and Lwów centers for the northern Renaissance, sponsoring learning, art, literature, and architecture that combined Italian and eastern European influences. Cities such as Gdańsk became centers for trade, with links to England, Holland, and beyond. Poland’s relatively small but battle-tested armies repelled invasions from her powerful neighbors and played the critical role in saving Vienna in 1683, defeating a major Turkish invasion of central Europe.
 
By the late 1600s, the internal tensions and external threats weakened the commonwealth. A small strata of powerful and wealthy nobles, known as “magnates,” expanded their powers at the expense of the majority of lesser nobles, as well as to the detriment of cities and the peasantry. Poland’s neighbors devel­oped autocratic monarchies with a taste for territorial expansion and were increasingly able to use their money to influence Polish politics and buy candidates for the throne. As the commonwealth declined, it grew increasingly impoverished and fell under the control of a Russian empire led by tsars such as Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. By the mid-1700s, Polish reformers, influenced by new political winds, sought to revitalize the government but were blocked by foreign interests and their local supporters. In 1772, Russia, Austria, and Prussia annexed pieces of the commonwealth, but this did not halt the reformers. Dur­ing this period many Poles went into political exile to escape the decline at home or avoid problems with pro-Russian foes. Many journeyed to France and some to America, where soldiers like Kazimierz Pułaski (1745-79) and Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746-1817) aided the American colonists in their struggle for independence. In 1791, the Polish parliament enacted Europe’s first democratic constitution, modeled on American efforts, transforming the coun­try into a true constitutional monarchy. This proved a direct threat to Poland’s autocratic neighbors. With an eye on revolutionary events in France, Russia and Prussia seized large swaths of Po­land, reducing the country to a mere shadow of its former self and ending the experiment in democracy. A revolt in 1794 led by Kościuszko sought to restore Poland’s independence. Despite some initial victories, it was defeated by Russian armies, and Po­land lost her independence.
 
For the next 123 years, Poland remained under Russian, Prus­sian (German), and Austrian occupation. Although Polish pa­triots staged periodic revolts to regain their lost freedom, none succeeded. Only with the end of World War I and the defeat of Germany and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires would Poland finally break free of foreign domination. This loss of freedom and the desire to regain it profoundly shaped Polish consciousness. The “Polish Cause” would occupy the minds and hearts of generations of Poles. The tragic loss of independence, the suffering and repression that accompanied it, and the hope of Poland’s restoration would be a key piece of the cultural legacy that Polish immigrants brought to America.
 
Emigration from Poland began in earnest during this “long nineteenth century” of subjugation. Polish political exiles often ended up in France or Switzerland, though small cells of these emigrants could be found throughout the world. In the years after the American Revolution, few Poles chose to come to the United States, but that began to change in the early 1830s following the unsuccessful November Insurrection in Poland. A few hundred Polish émigrés came to America in the 1830s, some of whom would find their way to the Illinois frontier.
 
There were several main waves of Polish immigration to the United States. Although some of the earliest and best-known Polish immigrants were political exiles, the vast majority of Poles who came to the United States—and Illinois—came for economic reasons.
 
Mass Polish immigration began in the 1850s. The first identifi­able Polish community was founded by a group of Silesians on the Texas Gulf Coast in 1854. The majority of early arrivals, however, chose to settle in the Midwest and Great Lakes states. Between the 1850s and the 1880s, most Polish immigrants came from areas of western Poland under Prussian (later German) rule. They fol­lowed their German and Czech neighbors as part of a European-wide wave of migration sparked by the economic and cultural changes brought on by industrialization and the modernization of agriculture. Traditional farm holdings were often converted to cash rents, impelling rural families to seek out opportunities for wage-labor jobs on larger estates or in Europe’s growing cit­ies. America, with its abundant farmland and growing industry, attracted more and more of these migrants. Wages in the New World outpaced those in Europe, and hard-working immigrants could earn good money. Immigrants came to support their fami­lies, sometimes saving their wages to return home to Poland to buy a small piece of land or build a better house.
 
These earliest immigrants were often “settler immigrants”—they came as family groups seeking to settle in the New World, often in rural areas. Poles from the German partition area enjoyed a somewhat higher standard of living than their counterparts un­der Austrian or Russian rule, so the first Poles coming to Illinois included some people with education and craft skills. While most Poles came from rural villages, over 85 percent of immigrants before World War I would make their homes in industrial cities like Chicago or in mining districts like central Illinois.
 
Although the earliest Polish communities were founded by settler immigrants, their numbers were soon dwarfed by masses of “labor immigrants.” These immigrants came as young men (and, as time went on, women) to take wage-labor jobs. Their sojourn in America was often viewed as temporary, and as many as 30 to 40 percent would ultimately return to Europe after working in the New World.
 
By the 1880s and 1890s, labor immigrants dominated the Polish immigrant flow. In addition, more and more immigrants began to arrive from the Austrian-controlled portion of Poland, especially from impoverished villages in the Carpathian Mountains. Im­migrants from the Russian zone also began to arrive, although it was illegal to leave Russia until 1891. By the turn of the century, immigrants from Austria and Russia dominated the migration of Poles to the United States, which grew into a torrent during the first decade of the twentieth century. By 1910, an estimated three million Poles had come to the United States. Only the outbreak of World War I put a halt to immigration from Poland as well as most of the rest of Europe. These American Polish communities became collectively known as “Polonia.”
 
The overwhelming majority of these Polish immigrants was Roman Catholic. Although a very large number of Jews from historic Polish lands also came to America’s shores during this same period, Jews and Poles in America adopted different identities, unlike in Europe where a portion of Jews identified as “Poles of the Mosaic faith.” Catholic Poles identified as Polish Americans and Jewish Poles as Jewish Americans, though they often settled in close proximity to each other, especially in large cities like Chicago. The same was true of other immigrants from historic Old Poland: Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and Rusyns (or Ruthenians), though some of these immigrants who joined Polish parishes in America did adopt a Polish identity.
 
Amid the chaos of war and revolution in 1918, Poland regained her independence. The end of the war brought a brief renewal of emigration from Poland, as well as some returns from America by those hoping to rebuild their mother country. In 1924, amid a growing wave of nativism, the U.S. government placed sharp restrictions on immigration from Poland and other countries in eastern and southern Europe, effectively halting the arrival of more Poles.
 
Poland’s independence lasted a mere twenty-one years. On September 1, 1939, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler launched German armies against Poland, which were joined seventeen days later by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s communist forces from the east in support of their Nazi allies. In spite of desperate resistance, Poland was again partitioned. From 1939 to 1945, Poland was ravaged by the forces of Europe’s most genocidal dictators. Under German rule, Poland’s ancient Jewish population was nearly an-nihilated. Both the Soviets and the Nazis sought to destroy the Polish nation, murdering millions and deporting millions more to concentration and death camps. Nearly 3 million Polish Jews died under Nazi rule between 1939 and 1945, along with about 2.5 million Polish Christians, leaving aside at least an another 150,000 murdered by the communists and an estimated 100,000 killed by Ukrainian nationalists. Nearly a quarter of Poland’s population perished. Despite the sacrifice and valor of Poland’s armies, which fought alongside the Americans and British throughout the war, Poland was given to Soviet dictator Stalin in 1945, who imposed a murderous program of subjugation on the exhausted and traumatized Poles, resulting in the murder of between 30,000 and 50,000 more people.
 
The war resulted in one of the greatest refugee problems in modern history, as millions of people were displaced or deported from their homes. Huge numbers of Poles found themselves as stateless refugees in camps throughout Germany, and many did not want to return home to the brutality and poverty of Soviet-ruled Poland. Hundreds of thousands of refugees—many former slave laborers and concentration camp victims—were joined by veterans of the Polish armed forces whose service alongside the Americans and British marked them as enemies of the Soviet-imposed communist regime. Many of these refugees made their way to America in the late 1940s and early 1950s, creating a new wave of Polish immigrants. These newcomers were quite distinct from the earlier waves of Polish immigration to the United States. They were deeply affected by their experiences in Europe, and many were well educated, patriotic, and motivated on behalf of the Polish cause.
 
Following the death of Stalin, a trickle of emigrants was able to leave communist Poland in the 1960s and 1970s. Despite some efforts at economic liberalization during this period, Poland was wracked by periodic crises and protests caused by government malfeasance and repression. Despite this, the communist regime in Warsaw backed by the Soviet Union and its vast military re-sources remained in control. In October 1978, however, that situation changed forever. A little-known Polish cardinal, Karol Wojtyła, was elected as the first non-Italian pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church in centuries. Pope John Paul II’s intelligence, wit, and evident personal holiness inspired his compatriots to peacefully challenge communist rule. Following the pope’s visit to Poland in 1979, the communists’ tools of fear and coercion began to fail. In 1980, Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the communist bloc, arose in Poland, setting off nationwide strikes that paralyzed the regime and captivated the attention of the world. In December 1981, the regime cracked down with force on the nonviolent Solidarity movement with targeted killings, beatings, and mass arrests of its leaders. In May of that year, Pope John Paul II barely survived an assassination attempt engineered by the Soviet KGB.
 
As in previous periods of repression, many Poles were forced to flee abroad. Imprisoned Solidarity activists were offered one-way visas to the West. Many, knowing that they and their children would face a lifetime of discrimination in jobs and schools, took the offer. The largest number of these “Solidarity émigrés” came to the United States, creating yet another wave of Polish immigration. Like their post-World War II counterparts, many of these immigrants were educated, often with families and children.
 
The violent response of Poland’s communist rulers, however, proved futile to stop the march of freedom unleashed by Pope John Paul II and Solidarity. Moreover, other communist satellite regimes began to unravel as well, as their people joined their Polish neighbors. In 1989, following protracted negotiations, Poland’s communists agreed to national elections. While not entirely free, Polish voters overwhelmingly rejected Communist Party candidates. The Communist Party collapsed, and with it the edifice of communist rule began to crumble and a new democratic Poland began to emerge from the rubble.
 
The economic legacy of communism did not, however, disappear quickly. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, large numbers of Poles migrated to Western Europe and the United States to look for work, to reunite families, or to seek education, creating the most recent wave of Polish immigrants. With Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004, the flow of Poles to America slowed once again as Polish migrants chose closer destinations in Europe.
 
Poland’s tumultuous history over the past two hundred years sparked successive waves of Polish immigrants to the New World. Their experience of emigration or exile shaped their outlook, colored their perspectives on America, and passed on in some form to their American children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. The Poles who settled in Illinois brought an ancient culture and experiences of home lost and found once more, discovering a place there that offered opportunity and hardship in equal measures. The heritage they carried with them and the experiences they found in the New World would form the building blocks of Illinois’s Polish American communities.