American Warsaw: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Polish Chicago by Dominic A. Pacyga

The epicenter of Polish American history

Since the first major wave of Polish immigration in the mid-19th century, the city of Chicago has been home to the largest concentration of Poles outside of Poland, making it the de facto capital of Polonia (people of Polish descent living outside of Poland). In his 2019 book American Warsaw, Chicago native and historian Dominic A. Pacyga provides a detailed history of this Polish American community. The importance of this ethnic enclave is heightened by the fact that for much of the last two centuries Poland has been conquered, occupied, and partitioned by various subjugating powers—Prussia, Russia, Austria, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union. Many of Chicago’s Poles were exiles or refugees who fled political upheaval and oppression in their homeland. The Polish community in Chicago, therefore, often served as a sort of polity in absentia who lobbied and fought for Polish independence, upheld Polish customs, and organized massive charitable efforts to support Poles in Europe.

I am one-quarter Polish American; not via Chicago but rather from a heavily Polish town in Wisconsin. Even though I have no direct connection to the Windy City, I still found this to be a very good history of the Polish American experience in general. Because of Chicago’s high population of Poles, many of the major Polish American political, cultural, and charitable organizations are headquartered there. Pacyga’s account of the ways in which Polish Americans and Polish exiles in Chicago responded to events occurring in their Old World homeland is in many ways relevant to other Polish American communities throughout the United States. Major events in Polish history such as the two world wars, the Soviet occupation, the election of Karol Wojtyla as Pope John Paul II, and the Solidarity labor movement inspired strong feelings and noble actions on the part of Polish Americans, and Pacyga does a fine job of recreating the experience of these decisive moments in time.

Throughout the book, Pacyga examines the changing perception of Polskosc (with acute accents over the last s and c) or Polishness. The collective idea of who could really be considered Polish changed over time as a result of conflicts between Polish immigrants and American-born Poles, Catholic Poles and non-Catholic Poles, working class Poles and aristocratic Poles, Jewish Poles and anti-Semitic Poles, old-timer immigrants and latecomer immigrants, nationalists and assimilationists, Polish speakers and English speakers, or inner city Poles and suburban Poles. Even with the outbreak of World War I, there was at first a split between those Poles who supported Russia and those who supported Germany and Austria. All these schisms between factions contributed to the molding of Polish identity within Chicago’s Polish American community.

Pacyga draws much of his research from Chicago’s Polish newspapers. Poles love a parade, and sometimes the text reads like a series of parades, neighborhood festivals, and political rallies, as chronicled in those papers. Due to the prominent role of Catholicism in the lives of many Poles, there’s also quite a bit about church history. At times, the text can get bogged down in demographic and financial statistics, but for the most part American Warsaw is an engaging and interesting read. The publisher overlooked an awful lot of typographical errors in the ebook, however, which is a shame.  

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