Glen Cove, N.Y... “The Constitution of the United States did much to inspire the May 3rd, 1791 Constitution of Poland,” said Elzbieta Majewska, president of the Polish Home of Glen Cove and Vicinity, (second from right) shown here with members of her executive board and guest speaker Frank Milewski, president of the Downstate N.Y. Division of the Polish American Congress (left).
As it does every year, the Polish Home marked the anniversary of the world’s second oldest constitution with a special patriotic and cultural commemorative program on its premises at 10 Hendrick Avenue.
In the photo are (from left to right): Mr. Milewski; Stanislaw Kuzma; Anna Czerwonka; Zdzislaw Backiel; Ms. Majewska and Tadeusz Jasinski.
Glen Cove Mayor Ralph Suozzi, an annual guest at the Polish Constitution observance, addressed the audience and presented Ms. Majewska with a commemorative certificate from the City of Glen Cove.
While Poland’s constitution was adopted only two years after America’s, it earned the arrogant contempt of Poland’s neighbors, Russia and Prussia.
The Russians and the Prussians (Germany’s predecessors) both invaded Poland and obliterated any ideas the Poles may have held about freedom and independence.
With Austria joining them, they partitioned the entire territory of Poland among themselves and absorbed the land as their own. All the promises and hopes of the 1791 constitution were gone by 1795.
Poland’s name on the maps of Europe was completely gone for the next 123 years and would not appear again until the end of the First World War in 1918.
“That’s why so many Polish Americans whose parents or grandparents came to America through Ellis Island were stunned when they found the personal documents of these Polish immigrants.
Their birth certificates showed they were born in either Russia, Germany or Austria and not in Poland,” said Polish American Congress president Milewski.