Poland in New Zealand

The Minister of Foreign Affairs announces a contest for the best foreign language publication promoting the history of Poland and the best Polish language publication on the history of Polish diplomacy. The contest welcomes works which were published in 2019. Historians can submit their works until 31 August 2020.

The Polish Embassy has established the “Life After Pahiatua” project to commemorate and honour the Polish Pahiatua Children and the enormous contribution they made, through sheer character and hard work, to the country that looked after them in their time of greatest need. 

The Adam Mickiewicz Institute is working on an interactive garden in virtual space inspired by the work of Krzysztof Penderecki. "Penderecki’s Garden" will flower in November, but users are invited to watch the project grow.

See the written results of study conducted by Renata Vickrey, Archive Librarian, Central Connecticut State University presented upon the assessment of the determinants of Polish identity among first and second-generation New Zealand-born individuals of Polish descent.

Seventy five years after the end of the Second World War, we pay tribute to its victims. We remember the indomitable struggle of the Polish nation against Nazi Germany throughout the conflict in Europe, lasting from September 1939 to May 1945.

In 1945, the Polish nation, hugely impacted by the Second World War, with other victims of two totalitarianisms in Central and Eastern Europe, witnessed what we call today “liberation without freedom”. In Poland, left behind the Iron Curtain, Josef Stalin implemented his policy of building a communist empire - writes Ambassador of the Republic of Poland Zbigniew Gniatkowski in his latest article.

Adopted on 3 May 1791 in Warsaw by the Sejm of the Polish Republic (later known as the Great Sejm), the Polish Constitution was Europe’s first and the world’s second modern constitution.

"The murders of at least 21,857 Polish prisoners-of-war were clinical, brutal and carried out day after day in remote Russian locations in April and May 1940. In the Katyń forest, trees muffled the shots of the specialised executioners, Soviet NKVD officers" - writes Barbara Scrivens in her emotional and personal presentation with stories told by the Polish families in New Zealand who lost their loved ones in the Katyń Massacre.

On 10 April 2010, a special TU-154M plane with the President of Poland Lech Kaczyński and the First Lady Maria Kaczyńska on board took off from Warsaw to Smolensk. On that very day the members of the official delegation were to participate in the ceremonies taking place in the Katyn War Cemetery, commemorating the 70th anniversary of the crime committed there. The aircraft carried 96 people, including members of the highest state authorities, representatives of various social circles and religious denominations, high-ranking military commanders and the plane’s crew. All the flight passengers died in the air disaster which took place during landing at the airport near Smolensk.

Please read through important information regarding the latest epidemiological threat.