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The Polish Declarations of Admiration and Friendship for the United States consist of 111 volumes that were assembled in Poland and given to President Calvin Coolidge in 1926, to mark the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Included are greetings from Polish government officials and representatives of Poland's religious, social, business, academic, and military communities.
Of greatest interest to genealogists and family historians are the thousands of signatures of Polish school children. Students in Skala's public school were among the participants in this project and the two pages upon which their signatures appear (volume 18, pp. 279-80) are reproduced above. The originals of these documents are in the Library of Congress.
The elaborately designed title on the first page reads: “The Polish Educational System in Tribute to the American Nation on the Occasion of the 150th Year of American Independence….. Below this are boxes for the name of the school, location [Skala n/Zbruzem], administrative district [Borszczow], school trustee, school principal, and school inspector.” Bloch, Susana Leistner, “Polish Declarations of Admiration and Friendship for the United States” in The Galitzianer (November, 2005, Vol. 13, No. 1).
Some of the decipherable signatures are listed below. Several children wrote only their surnames. Where there is an asterisk [*], the first name is not legible. Those with (1) after their names are on page 279; those with (2) after their names are on page 280.
Tragically, many of these children grew up to be murdered in the Holocaust. A number of their names may be found on the martyrs' list in the Skala yizkor book.
Page designed and text copyrighted by Helene Kenvin