Polish Veterans of World War II (United States)

Polish Veterans of World War II (Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantów w Stanach Zjednoczonych, SPK), organized in 1952, formally founded a year later, and terminated in 2012, was a Polish-American association for veterans of the Polish Armed Forces in the West during World War II. It was a member of the World Federation of Polish Veterans of World War II, an umbrella organization that included similar associations from other countries. The Association's President Janusz Krzyżanowski currently serves as the chairman of its liquidation committee, working to create a scholarly source of information about the SPK.

History and Activity
The Association was created during a November 1952 convention, but scattered groups of Polish combatants in the U.S. existed prior to the date. Most of the future members of the SPK arrived in the U.S. after the American Congress passed a 1946 law amendment in 1950, which allowed the immigration of Polish soldiers who had fought in Italy under Władysław Anders and then moved to England.

The bulk of the SPK membership was comprised of combatants of the Polish Armed Forces in the West, which formed from the so-called "soldiers' emigration" following the September Campaign of 1939. The SPK, however, did not refer to its members as "immigrants." Some had left Poland to fight alongside the French and then, after the fall of France, the British. Others were arrested by the NKVD, miraculously avoided being murdered in the Katyn Massacre and were drafted into the Anders Army created on Soviet soil. Others still came from the First Polish Mechanized Division fighting in Germany, Nazi concentration camps and the Home Army. According to some estimates, the Polish Armed Forces in the West counted quarter of a million troops and were the third largest Allied contingent in West by the end of the war, after those of the U.S. and the U.K.

Most of the Polish combatants from the eastern borderlands of Poland, lost to the Soviet Union in 1945, decided to not return home after the hostilities had ended. Many were also wary of the communist regime installed in Warsaw after the treaty of Yalta and its persecution of Home Army soldiers.

One of the accomplishments of the SPK was influencing the American Congress to pass the Polish Veterans Rights Legislation, signed into law by President Gerald F. Ford in 1976, which gave Polish veterans the privilege of treatment in American veteran hospitals.

The SPK published the quarterly Kombatant w Ameryce, which informed members of organizational matters as well as the misery of the Polish Nation under communism and international events.

The veterans who belonged to the SPK maintained the graves of Polish soldiers who fell on the European battlefields, located in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, among others. SPK members are also buried in the American Częstochowa of Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

The SPK celebrated American and Polish national holidays, including those forbidden in the Polish People's Republic, for example that commemorating the Polish victory over the Bolsheviks. Members participated in radio broadcasts, helped established Polish Saturday schools, assisted one another financially, cooperated with Polish and American scouts.

Some SPK veterans lived to see Poland regain independence in 1989 after the fall of communism and to participate in the 1992 Victory Parade in Warsaw. Some also witnessed Poland's accession to NATO in 1999.

Due to a shrinking number of combatants, the SPK was officially terminated during a 2012 convention. SPK President Janusz Krzyżanowski became the chairman of the liquidation committee. He currently sorts, organizes and describes the records of the Association.

Aims
The convention of the SPK that took place in 1953 set up the following aims:
 * Strengthening of ties between members by cultivating traditions of fighting for Polish independence and against the communist Warsaw regime;
 * Establishing contact with American organizations that group veterans of all free nations who fought for similar aims;
 * Winning rights and privileges for Polish veterans similar to those to which American veterans are entitled;
 * Helping the crippled and disabled Polish combatants in less affluent countries;
 * Maintaining Polish graves of those fallen on the European battlefields.