Re: Our Polish Ancestors book

Valersworth — Fri Jun 12, 2026 11:31 pm

Author: Valersworth

Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2026 11:31 pm

This sounds like a valuable book for anyone interested in Polish heritage beyond political history. The focus on everyday life, traditions, and the experiences of rural communities makes it stand out from typical history books.

Our Polish Ancestors book

dgawell — Fri Jun 05, 2026 3:50 pm

Author: dgawell

Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2026 3:50 pm

A new book, available on Amazon : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G2GN43RH

Review of “Our Polish Ancestors” in the June July, 2026 edition of the Polish American Journal. Review by David Trawinski.
Donna Gawell’s “Our Polish Ancestors” celebrates our heritage, its customs and traditions, and its origins. Subtitled “The history and culture of Poland from Prehistory to World War I” I was enthralled to see that it was not merely another recitation of important dates in Polish history or explanation of the Szlachta and their “Golden Veto.” Those are vitally important and very prevalent.
This work fills a void by offering a historical perspective on the lives of the peasants who struggled to eke out a living from the land. It’s twenty-four chapters include “A Little History of Poland,” The Prussian and Russian Partitions,” Serfdom,” “Life on a Typical Polish Farm,” “Market Days,” “Sickness, Epidemics and Plagues and “Death, Funerals and Cemeteries.”
If you wonder why the Prussian and Russian Partitions are explored but not the Austrian Partitions, this entire work is highly focused on the Galician (Austrian-partitioned) provinces. The Galician provinces were much more lenient in their attempts to control or eradicate Polish culture and customs than the Prussian Germanification or the Tsarist Russification attempts.
Two of my favorite chapters are entitled “Holiday and Holydays” and “Superstitions and Ancient Rites.” The first deals not only with the Christmas Wigilia meal, but also the traditions of New Year’s Eve; Lent (including Maundy Thursday’s focus on the Last Supper, the fasting of Good Friday; the blessing of the food on Holy Saturday; and finally Easter (with zurek soup and pisanki, the multitude of colorful hand-painted Easter eggs); Dyngus Day followed with its sprinkling of water rituals. By contrast, the next chapter, “Superstitions and Ancient Rites,” deals with darker elements of the culture, especially regarding witchcraft and vampire superstitions of pagan times. Photos of evidence of vampire burials from Polish museums are included.
Overall, Gawell has added to the cultural knowledge base available to readers. Much is drawn from her travels to the “Old Country, and she performs a remarkable service in including photos of museum artifacts, prints of classical Polish art, and other colorful cultural images throughout this work. The writing is superb, ever so enjoyable as one feels warmly bathed in the forgotten details of a time long past. I highly recommend her book.

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Re: Our Polish Ancestors book

Our Polish Ancestors book