The Polish American Historical Association invites you all to join us at a webinar that features talks by Iwona Flis and Dr. Piotr Derengowski, who will both present their ongoing research projects. The virtual event will take place on Saturday, February 13, 11:00 AM EST/17:00 Warsaw. The event is free and open to all!
All attendees must register: https://umich.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEvdeGuqzgtHtEiPMD7RTLX74iqifuuODrS
Iwona Flis (University of Gdańsk)
Community Archives as a Way to Manifest Identity and Preserve One’s Heritage. The Case of Polish Migrants of the World War II Diaspora in North America.
The lecture examines the significance of community archives in preserving records of Polish migrants who settled in America during and immediately after World War II. It addresses the following questions: how community archives differ from state archives, why they are a great place for memoirs of the Polish World War II Diaspora, and which archives hold records of this wave of Polish migration to North America. As documents of the war generation may disappear in the nearest future, it is the last moment to take measures to preserve them, and to provide better access to them for researchers, educators and a wider public. Efforts undertaken so far to preserve the diaspora’s documentation, including PAHA’s initiatives, will be discussed.
Piotr Derengowski (University of Gdańsk)
William Kossak and His Journal
William Kossak is definitely one of those Civil War officers who earned his place in pages of history with hard work and accomplishments. He was extremely talented cartographer (many of his maps appeared in “Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies”), a skillful engineer erecting fortifications in Union outposts at Vicksburg or Natchez, and a commander of a pontoon train, that was enabling Union army to pass numerous creeks and rivers on their way through Georgia and Carolinas. Hist Journal (1863-1865), a part of Shoff Civil War Collection at William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, is an excellent, yet unexplored, source of insight into the Civil War, providing interesting and new, thus valuable perspective, especially to Sherman’s campaigns in Georgia and Carolinas.
