On 14 August 2022, in celebration of Poland’s Armed Forces Day, the Polish Consulate General in Chicago headed a series of ceremonies all across the Chicagoland area. Accompanying Madam Consul MaÅ‚gorzata BÄ…k-Guzik was Brig. Gen. Krzysztof Nolbert, Defense, Naval and Air Attaché, and Lt. Col. Karol Budniak, Deputy Defense Attaché, of the Polish Armed Forces, along with General James G. Silvasy of the Illinois Air National Guard. On their itinerary were visits to two cemeteries in Niles with historic ties to the Polish diaspora of Chicago.
Polish Veterans Section at Maryhill Cemetery
The day of celebration, which actually occurs on 15 August in Poland, began at Resurrection Catholic Cemetery in Justice. There the Polish and American dignitaries laid flowers at a monument dedicated to veterans of the Polish Army. Following the event, the Madame Consul BÄ…k and her entourage drove north to visit two more cemeteries in Niles. Maryhill Cemetery was first on the agenda.
Consecrated in 1961, Maryhill Cemetery is a popular resting place for Poles and Americans of Polish descent. It is also home to a special section reserved for Polish war veterans. The Polish Veterans section, located in section five, adjacent to the service yard, is the final resting place of hundreds of veterans and their spouses. Its founders were Polish veterans of the Second World War whom later emigrated to Chicago.
Click here to learn more about the Polish Veterans section at Maryhill Cemetery.
Present for the ceremony at Maryhill Cemetery was the 566th Air Force Band of the Air National Guard. The bandsmen set up their position in front and to the left of the monument in the veterans section. Standing at attention on either side of the monument were members of the Tadeusz Kościuszko Polish Lancers Society. Dressed in splendid blue and red uniforms, adorned with gold epaulets, and armed with ceremonial swords, the lancers also served as the color guard. They presented both the flags of Poland and the United States.
From the bandsmen’ instruments came the anthems of Poland and the United States. Once cleared of music, the air at the site became filled with prayer and an appeal to the fallen. Then placed at the base of the monument, having both Brig. Gen. Nolbert and General Silvasy step forward, were flowers and candles. The band next played the Polish soldiers song ‘The Red Poppies on Monte Cassino’– a rather fitting gesture. Buried all throughout the veterans section are survivors of the Battle of Monte Cassino.
The ceremony over, the dignitaries paused for a brief photo session. Just two miles away awaited their next stop.
War memorials at St. Adalbert Cemetery
In Niles, and on Milwaukee Avenue as well, is St. Adalbert’s Cemetery. Two Slavic priests in Chicago, one Czech, the other Polish, founded the cemetery in 1872. Since then, St. Adalbert’s has grown to become the largest Catholic cemetery in the Archdiocese of Chicago. Spread across 255 acres are over 300,000 interments. Here the historic intelligentsia and working masses of the Polish diaspora in Chicago lay side-by-side.
A pair of Polish war memorials were the focus of Madame Consul BÄ…k and her party at St. Adalbert’s. Paid homage first was a memorial dedicated to fallen servicemen of the First World War.
Erected by the Fathers and Mothers Gold Star Society, and unveiled on 4 July 1928, the memorial consists of an obelisk surrounded by four bronze statues. Three of the statues represent armed services of the United States military: the Army, Marines, and Navy. The fourth statue represents the Polish Army in France: a soldier dressed in a French uniform, topped with a Polish rogatywka, stands at attention. During the war, between 20 and 25,000 volunteers from North America fought with the Polish military formation under French command.
Next the dignitaries directed their attention to a memorial dedicated to victims of the Katyn Massacre. A bronze statue of the Virgin Mary gently holds one of those executed, nearly 22,000 Polish military officers and members of the Polish intelligentsia, by the NKVD, in front of a cross.
Its sculptor was local Polish artist Wojciech Seweryn. After losing his father, a Polish Army officer, at Katyn, Seweryn himself would tragically perish in the 2010 Polish Air Force Crash near Smolensk. A monument dedicated to victims of the disaster was then erected next to Seweryn’s creation in 2011.
I am trying identify a Polish-American Group that was in Chicago around 1890.