Abstract This article analyzes the amazing evolution of Krystyna Bierzyńska (1928–2025) after World War II, focusing primarily on her settlement in the United States and the diverse identities she adopted over the next seventy-four years. Qualified to enter America in 1951 as an Allied co-combatant with her first husband, Evgenii (Genek) Boruszczak, she opted to settle in Southern California, where she hoped to blaze her own trail as an American citizen without being pigeonholed as a traditional Polish immigrant. Here Krystyna temporarily succeeded in bringing together her fellow émigrés with her new American neighbors. After the collapse of her first and second marriages, Krystyna relied on American female friends to navigate her life as a divorced mother of two. Ultimately, this Polish American felt secure enough to reveal her Jewish roots and experience in the Holocaust to a wide array of audiences.
Abstract This article examines the life and career of Dr. Janina Wójcicka Hoskins, a distinguished historian and bibliographer. A graduate of Jagiellonian University and the wife of Franciszek, a lawyer, politician, and representative of the Polish Peasant Party (PSL), Wójcicka fled communist Poland in 1949, eventually arriving in the United States via Sweden. She played a pivotal role in developing and expanding the Polish Collections at the Library of Congress, working in close collaboration with members of the US Congress, American and Polish scholars, as well as institutions such as Polish and American libraries and universities, and leading the Public Law 480 program on behalf of eighteen American libraries. Through these efforts, she helped secure a wealth of valuable materials and made them accessible for public use. Her contributions extend beyond acquisitions. Wójcicka curated several exhibitions at the Library of Congress and delivered educational and promotional talks via Radio Free Europe and Voice of America. More importantly, she is recognized for compiling numerous bibliographies, authoring a guide to Polish reference materials, and actively participating in professional organizations including the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, and the American Historical Association. This article draws primarily on the Janina Wójcicka Hoskins Papers, housed in Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries.
Abstract Many theories of migration (e.g., circular migration theory, the target income theory, the neoclassical economic theory) examine external factors (e.g., wages, opportunities, assets) to explain migrant decisions to leave, to stay, and to return. What we overlook in these economic rational actor models is an understanding of how migration decisions are embedded in social relationships. One contemporary migrant, Anna Maksymiuk Kieturakis, who was part of a corps of translators during the Gdańsk strikes in 1980, describes her decision to leave Poland as influenced by her fiancé, her decision to stay in the United States as intertwined with her husband's career and son's childrearing needs, and her decision to return as motivated by the educational needs of her son. Understanding these migration decisions within a matrix of relations does not diminish the migrant's agency, nor does it suggest that one set of needs is subservient to another, only that people make choices, and their decisions are embedded within and bounded by personal relationships.
Abstract In this article, I analyze the correspondence between writer and academic Danuta Mostwin and Jerzy Giedroyc, the editor of the Paris-based monthly magazine Kultura. I trace their personal relationship and find numerous references to intellectual debates, historical disputes, and comments on current events in Poland and around the world. The correspondence, which spanned forty-five years, documents the maturation of the budding writer Danuta Mostwin, as well as her life's journey and professional and civic emancipation. As one of Giedroyc's few experts on the Polish community in the United States and American society, Mostwin left behind insightful analyses in this field. Often, they were inspired by the editor of Kultura. Ultimately, one must ask whether their relationship evolved from one of service to one of friendship over the years.
Abstract Ewa Karpińska-Gierat (also known as Ewa Gierat) was an editor, author, social worker, and scout leader. Her traces can be found in publications and documentation of numerous Polish American organizations, such as the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, the North American Study Center for Polish Affairs, the Polish Scouting Organization—ZHP Inc., and the Polish American Congress. Her life was abound in diverse initiatives to integrate the Polish American diaspora, especially the intellectual part of it, into a more unified whole, with the potential for members to blend into American society, while preserving the diaspora's best qualities and pride in its heritage, and to influence American politics in order to help the democratic opposition in Poland in its fight against communism. She also advocated for the cooperation of Polish communities all over the world to strengthen Polonia's self-consciousness in a global context.
Abstract The movements of our forebears forge the path that leads to the place and time of our origin. Our prehistory, then, is rooted in the generations that came before us, with the political, economic and social spheres of each era influencing options and choices. Delving into the history of those periods allows us to locate ourselves within the generational transmission of heritage and identity. Key subjects in my family story are resilient women—my mother and grandmother—whose life paths were impacted by war and oppressive regimes. Traveling between two continents, their legacy is children—nine delivered by my grandmother, my mother birthing only one. With no children of my own, I am the final member of this trinity of women. Telling their stories—our stories—becomes my legacy. In this article, I give voice to matriarch Emilia by employing the methodology of memory work with family photos. The images and texts they inspire offer traces of key journeys. Identifying the common threads of heritage and home underscores my place in this lineage and establishes my role and identity as a Polish American, as well as an Amerykanka.
Abstract Historiography presents a largely institutional record of Polish immigrant life in Canada during the 1920s and 1930s. Based on a photographic album created by Mary Adamowska Panaro, this article presents a story of a Polish immigrant woman's agency in establishing her personal and professional life in Winnipeg. Panaro is both the subject and the curator of the album, and in her careful construction, selection, and safeguarding of the materials, she assumes agency in the form her biography takes and expresses the intention to share her life story. An analytical interpretation of Panaro's photo album establishes an individual- and family-focused counterbalance helping to provide a more well-rounded and representative understanding of how individuals experienced and fit into the larger historical context of interwar Canada.
This article examines the work of Jerzy Lerski, a Polish political émigré in the United States after World War II, during his time in Japan in the 1950s. It explores the reasons behind his stay of over three years in that country and the nature of his work there. By tracing Lerski's connection to the Asia Foundation, the study reveals that he was closely tied to US Cold War information campaigns in Asia, which involved deploying political exiles like him to promote anticommunism abroad. However, this was only one aspect of Lerski's activities in Japan. As a historian, he was employed at Nihon University in Tokyo, conducted seminars at the Japan Institute of Foreign Affairs (Nihon Gaisei Gakkai) on East Central European history after 1945, and pursued research into Polish-Japanese relations. Additionally, he served as the representative of the Assembly of Captive European Nations in Japan. By situating Lerski within the broader contexts of postwar Japan and the global Cold War, the article examines his interactions with various institutional and individual actors both within and beyond Japan. Furthermore, it addresses the question of the agency of figures like Lerski, who were used by governments and intelligence services while simultaneously pursuing their own political agendas.
