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WHAT'S
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THE INSTITUTE;
Yesterday and Today
Delivered by Mr. Jacek Galazka, president of the Pilsudski Institute on June 6, 2003, at the Montreal, Quebec meeting of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences.
The Institute was founded in New York City on July 4th, 1943 - a symbolic day - by two Polonian journalists (Franciszek Januszewski and Maksymilian Wegrzynek), and three ministers of the prewar Polish Government (Ignacy Matuszewski, Henryk Floyar-Rajchman and Waclaw Jedrzejewicz). Their goal was simple: to continue the fight for the independence of enslaved Poland by
defending historical truth about that country.
The story really begins, however, in Poland in 1923, when the Ministry of Defense set up an Institute for research in the modern history of Poland (Instytut Badania Najnowszej Historii Polski). In 1936, it was renamed the Pilsudski Institute one year after the death of Marshal Jozef Pilsudski. Pilsudski, commander of the Polish Legions in World War I, Head of the Polish State from 1918 to 1922 and the Minister of Defense in 1923, was an accomplished writer and historian who had the unusual opportunity of making history as well. At the time of his retirement at Sulejowek, he donated his state pension to the welfare of his legionaries and earned his living as a historian and author.
The German invasion in 1939 was a major test for an institution that held precious archives, including the state archives for the years 1918-1922. That was the period during which Pilsudski had been Head of State and Commander in Chief of an army that defeated the Red Army in 1920 and halted their westward expansion of communism. (The decisive battle of Warsaw, in August, 1920, was called by some a Miracle on the Vistula. With all due respect and thanks to all deities who helped, it was a victory that Pilsudski wrought, buying precious time for Poland and the West).
A part of those archives made their secret way to New York during the Second World War, and today the Institute has the second largest collection in America of archives on Polish modern history. Only the Hoover Institution in California has more. Sadly, most of the prewar archives of the Institute were seized by the Soviets after the war and are still in Moscow.
When Poland regained its sovereignty in 1989, the Institute became a Mecca for Polish historians and researchers who had had virtually no access to the historical truth, falsified or obscured by the German invaders, Soviet occupiers and their communist puppets. Scholars from all over the world made their way to the Institute to study our unique documents. Always responsive to the needs of scholars everywhere, but particularly in Poland, the Institute began to reach out to newly independent Poland.
Looking back, we can see three phases of our existence. Phase One was from 1943 to 1945, when the Polish government in exile ceased to be recognized by our wartime allies, The Institute was engaged in an ideological war against Poland’s occupiers and their acolytes in defense of historical truth, which was suppressed, distorted and denied.
From 1945 until 1989, in Phase Two, the Institute continued its struggle to protect our history from communism in all its varieties; Soviet, Polish and American. In the beginning, the nature of that danger was not fully understood by some of our American hosts, conditioned by Soviet and Soviet-inspired propaganda. The work of gathering and protecting documents, of keeping the record straight, with volunteers and limited means at their disposal was a challenge met by a group of prominent Poles and Polish Americans.
Most of the work was confidential, some of it secret. There was no time and no means to provide for the long-term future of the Institute in America. There were no powerful benefactors who could assure its existence. The survival of the Institute – a game still in progress - is a great tribute to the collective ingenuity of many dedicated volunteers too numerous to mention.
In Phase Three, from the time when Poland regained its sovereignty in 1989, the Institute has opened its archives to the many historians who sought to rebuild Polish historiography. In turn, Polish institutions, governmental and private, began to help the Institute. The General Directorate of Poland’s National Archives provides expert archivists supported in part by the Kosciuszko Foundation. Grants from Poland’s private Science Foundation paid for new archival equipment needed to modernize our archives. The Jurzykowski Foundation of New York, long time benefactor, provided funds to set up a new bilingual website www.pilsudski.org. which we are very proud of. Today, the Institute has state-of-the-art archives which are already partly available to researchers throughout the world via the internet. All Polish libraries, part of the SEZAM network, will have access to our database this year.
After years of shadowy existence, the Institute has become a museum of Polish history and art and a major resource of Polish culture in the metropolitan New York area. With one staff person and a small group of marvelous volunteers, the Institute has put on a scholarly conference on the 1920 Polish-Soviet war, photographic exhibits, art exhibits and lectures. Many Polish schools in the area have visited our museum; which is what we are: an important gallery of Polish paintings, a history library of some 22,000 volumes, collections and displays of photographs, maps, stamps, medals, postcards and audiovisual materials. The Institute is a uniquely bilingual cultural center as well as the second largest archive of Polish modern history in the United States, after the Hoover Institution.
Poland recognizes its importance and has been helping in the work of restoring and preserving the records of Silesian Uprisings (1918-1921). Given its economic problems, Poland is not in a position to help support the Institute in America. That duty must fall on Polonian shoulders.
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