November – A Month of Rememberances

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Thanksgiving, Armistice Day, Rememberance Day, and Veteran’s Day – the month of November is all about Rememberance.  We give thanks for those still with us,  we remember our fallen, and we reassess our priorities.

At the end of World War I, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, an independent Poland was restored as the 13th of Woodrow Wilson’s famous 14 points.  After 123 years since one of Europe’s greatest sins, the three partitions of Poland of 1772, 1793 and 1795, robbed a historically sovereign people of its country and attempted to eliminate its language, culture and history. So in Poland, November 11th is celebrated as Independence Day, honoring the return of their country with the end of “The War to End All Wars”. War never precludes war,  as the Poles and the rest of the world would be traumatically reminded, on September 1, 1939.

An amazing thing happened during those 123 years that Poland was sliced up by Russia, Prussia, and Austria.  The culture of Poland flourished. It lived in the hearts and homes of the Polish people.  As the German speaking people attempted to “Germanize” them, as the Russians attempted to “Russify” them, the outlawed Polish language spilled forth from this proud people.  Is it any surprise that today the literacy rate in Poland is among the highest on Earth at 99.7%.  This is the result of a people who had to fight for their language, their culture and their country!  These are reflected in the national anthem of Poland, Mazurek Dabrowskiego, which begins “Poland has not yet perished, so long as we still live”.