Brother Against Brother

The pre-World War II political conflicts that characterized the life of the Polish National Alliance (PNA) fraternal society, the largest organization in the Polish immigrant and ethnic community in the United States, are largely forgotten today. But this prolonged and ideologically charged fight between two nearly evenly matched factions within the Alliance not only involved a battle for the soul of the PNA. To a large degree it affected the entire Polish ethnic community in America. A key issue was the proper relationship between the emigration and the newly independent Poland, a state whose rebirth in 1918 had for decades been a high priority in Polonia. The story of this conflict is instructive in at least two ways. First, it shows the continuing power of ethnic feeling within the Polish American community during the entire period, particularly in the interwar period, something that continued during World War II and for decades after. Second, it offers a cautionary lesson about the adverse consequences that a too intense relationship between an ethnic diaspora and its members’ ancestral homeland can have in directing the community’s focus away from its other concerns

Alliance · Ancient history · Battle · Brother · Diaspora · Economic history · Emigration · Ethnic group · Homeland · Ideology · Immigration · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · European history and politics · French Historical and Cultural Studies · History · Law · Polish Historical and Cultural Studies