A Polish story for you to tell

Your Polish story may be different from anybody else's and our mission is to help you reconstruct, experience, and tell it. With in-house historical expertise, we offer a range of services to help connect you to your ancestry, including:

• Compiling stories and images to reconstruct a day in life your ancestors

• Collecting regional recipes to help you experience a taste of your ancestral home in your American home

• Preparing custom guides to following in your ancestors' footsteps through the places of worship, schoolhouses, market squares, streets, and fields where they lived, worked, and played

• Arranging your participation in authentic cultural events, so that you can experience the festivities and rituals known to your ancestors

• Genealogy research.

We would love to hear your story and learn how we can help you experience your heritage, either by visiting Poland in person, or from the comfort of your home.

Be a part of the legacy

At the core of the modern Polish identity is pride in our long tradition of struggle for freedom. Over the last three centuries, generations of Poles have contributed to a story of defending democratic liberties, both their own and others'. Examples of steadfast resistance against occupiers and oppressors include:

• Contributions of Polish military leaders, including Tadeusz Kościuszko and Kazimierz Pułaski, to the American Revolution

• Multiple armed uprisings against the occupying Russian Empire throughout the nineteenth century

• Large-scale armed resistance against the Nazi German occupation during World War II, culminating in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, which involved tens of thousands of Polish civilians and lasted for an impressive 63 days

• Organized resistance against the communist rule in twentieth century Poland, resulting in Poland becoming the first Soviet bloc country to hold democratic elections in 1989, preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall by five months.

Whether or not you or your ancestors were in Poland at the time of these events, they are a part of your history. We are here to help connect you to this legacy by bringing you to to the monuments, museums, and events that commemorate our heroic past.

On August 1, 2024, the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, tens of thousands of people gathered to sing Uprising-era songs.

Your ancestors' unique experience

There is no single Polish American story or path to follow when exploring these ancestral lands. As recently as 1931, Poland was home to a rich mix of cultures and ethnicities:

22 million ethnic (typically Catholic) Poles,
3.5 million Ukrainians and Ruthenians,
3 million Jews,
1 million Belarusians,
750 thousand Germans,

and many more, including even several thousand Tatar Muslims inhabiting northeast Poland since the fourteenth century.

With different parts of the country occupied by Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary throughout the nineteenth century and torn by wars in the twentieth century, its peoples had widely varying experiences depending on their geographic locations. Levels of cultural, linguistic, and religious freedoms were different from region to region and relationships between ethnic groups varied from close integration in some towns to segregation and hostility in others.

Immigrants came to the United States in multiple waves, driven by factors ranging from economic difficulty to wars to persecution. Today Poland is a prosperous, safe, and once again increasingly diverse country. Making the trip is a great way to honor those who came before us and reclaim pride in our Polish heritage, all while enjoying a scenic and fun vacation.

★★★★★

With Mary Grace and Tomek, I was able to experience more parts of Poland and its culture than I knew existed! They helped me honor my Babcia (grandma) by guiding me through areas where her family came from, ranging from the small town of just a few hundred residents called Działyń, to the beautiful and historic city of Warsaw. I couldn't have done it all without them!

Vicky from Long Island, NY