By John Czop
Mr. Frank J. Spula, President of the Polish National Alliance and the Polish American Congress hosted a luncheon meeting for elected officials, candidates for offices, and diaspora community leaders on Friday, June 24, 2022 at the venerable Union League Club in Chicago.
In May, President Spula met with United States Ambassador Mark Brzezinski in Warsaw. The Ambassador accepted with great pleasure President Spula’s invitation to meet with community leaders in Chicago, and to deliver a speech on how Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine affects American foreign policy-making.
President Frank J. Spula began the event by welcoming the excellencies, the elected officials, and all the other guests and then introduced Ambassador Mark Brzezinski.
On Thursday, June 23, President Biden called Ambassador Brzezinski to meetings at the White House. This obliged Ambassador Brzezinski to deliver from Washington, D.C. his speech to the meeting at the Union League Club.
The Ambassador reported that the hospitality, unprecedented in world history, of the Polish people, who have taken into their homes Ukrainian women and children, inspired President Biden, who wondered why Poles are doing so much. Ambassador Brzezinski said that he told the President that: Poles see today’s Ukrainians, victimized by a cruel Kremlin oppressor, like their forebears who were brutalized by Hitler in September 1939, when Poland decided to fight rather than submit to Nazi Germany.
Ambassador Brzezinski next described Poland’s massive defense project to purchase expensive American made state-of-the-art equipment. In his introductory remarks, President Spula said that the Polish American Congress, as a member organization of the Washington, D.C. based Central and East European Coalition (CEEC), is working hard to get deep discounts for Poland and the other CEEC countries.
Polish American Congress National Secretary Tim Kuzma moderated questions, that were forwarded to Polish American Congress National Vice-President for Membership Development Mary Sendra Anselmo and PAC National Treasurer Micheline Jaminski. Ambassador Brzezinski answered those questions.
