The Polish section at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Cemetery in Niagara on the Lake, popularly known as the Hallerian Cemetery, is associated with the establishment of the Tadeusz Kosciuszko military camp in this locality in 1917, where, after training, Polish volunteers fought in Europe for a free and independent Poland, thus writing the most beautiful page in the history of the Polish community in the United States and Canada.

With the outbreak of the First World War, Poles at home and around the world recognised that the opportunity had come to rebuild a sovereign Polish state, which had ceased to exist at the end of the 18th century and had been wiped off the map of Europe due to partitions by Russia, Prussia and Austria. It was then that committees began to form in many countries, mainly in France and the United States, to raise funds and recruit volunteers for the emerging Polish military units fighting alongside the Western Allies: England and France, and later joining units on Polish soil.

Polish recruits

On 5 October 1917, thanks to the diplomacy of Ignacy Jan Paderewski, US President Woodrow Wilson signed a decree allowing Poles from the USA to form their army. As international treaties at the time did not allow them to train on American soil, Canada came to the rescue, making available land near the border scenic town of Niagara on the Lake. It was here, on the shores of Lake Ontario, that the Tadeusz Kosciuszko Training Camp was established, funded by the French and run by the Canadians, with Colonel Arthur D'Orr LePan of the Canadian Armed Forces as commander.

Nearly 40,000 volunteers registered at 47 recruitment centres across America and Canada during the ongoing recruitment drive. 22,395 were deemed fit for military service. All were sent to a training camp in Niagara on the Lake. Most of the volunteers arrived there via the American border town of Buffalo in New York State, where a Polish-American Citizens Committee operated to coordinate the efforts of other Polish-American organisations and provide food, transport and accommodation for those travelling to the camp. It was headed by Rev. Cezary Krzyżan and Dr. Francis E. Fronczak, who also served as Commissioner of Health Services for the City of Buffalo and was also a member of the Paris-based Polish National Committee.

According to the Canadian Ministry of Defence, published in a 1923 issue of the Niagara Historical Society, 22,174 volunteer soldiers from the United States and Canada passed through Camp Tadeusz Kosciuszko. "The commonness of camp life in November (1917 - author's note) was particularly enhanced by two historic ceremonies. On November 4, the consecration and display of the Polish flag on the camp flagpole, and on November 21, the consecration and presentation of the flag to the Third Battalion, which was combined with a grand revue and, a few days later, with a military ball," noted Lieutenant Witold Hilary Trawiński in his diary ( Odyseja Polskiej Armii Błękitnej , Wyd. Ossolineum, Wrocław 1989), who was an officer in the Polish camp at Niagara on the Lake. - "The consecration of the camp flag was performed by Rev. B. Celichowski, who had arrived from Milwaukee, Wis. in place of Rev. Bishop Paul Rhody, and the consecration of the battalion flag by Rev. J. Jaworski, chaplain of the 1st Battalion. Both ceremonies were attended by a large number of prominent representatives of the Polish community from the States and Canada, and hundreds of relatives and friends of the volunteers in the camp."

Paderewski's visit

On 21 November 1917, the 3rd Battalion's flag dedication ceremony took place; the T. Kosciuszko camp was visited by the great statesman and artist Ignacy Jan Paderewski himself, and from the grandstand erected for the occasion he delivered - as Lt. Trawinski put it - "a solemn speech, drawn from his patriotic heart":

"I greet you, dear soldiers of Poland - he said - I greet you as a representative of the Polish National Committee, I greet you as a representative and plenipotentiary of the National Department. I am happy to speak to the soldiers of the Polish Army, our hope. I am happy and my heart is filled with pride, because I have heard praise for you. I have heard praise from the mouths of your superior officers, I have heard praise from the Military Commission, whose representative you see right next to me, in the person of my warm friend, Mr Aleksander Znamięcki. I wanted to go with you and share your hardships and inconveniences together, but I was not allowed to. The Polish National Committee instructed me to guard the Polish cause in the capital of the United States. I am in my spirit a soldier, so I must obey. You, my dear soldiers, are the pride of the strong, the hope of the doubters, the love of the whole Polish nation.

I am happy to see you in this line, because I see in it the herald of Polish victory. Your homeland demands great sacrifices from you, but a great reward awaits you, because the freedom and independence of a united Poland depend on your bravery.

Today you celebrate the banner of the Third Battalion. Remember that the banner is the Homeland, that the banner is Her honour, all Her virtues, that the banner is a symbol of discipline, in the name of which you must stand under it and defend it to the death.

Go forward with confidence in victory, and may God Most High bless you and be happy!

Long live a great, independent and free Poland!"

As a Polish volunteer officer noted in his diary: "After this speech Master Paderewski acceded to the ensign and kissed it and the banner. Whereupon three full battalions with the beginning of a fourth battalion prefaced in front of the tribune."

Lieutenant Trawinski's memoir is one of the most significant descriptions of the training of Polish volunteers in the T. Kosciuszko camp. But not only that, as camp life was also documented in the plates of photography of the time and in paintings by the famous Canadian painter Charles William Jefferys (1869-1951), which are in the War Museum in Ottawa.

The "Spanish flu" epidemic

In September 1918, an epidemic of "Spanish flu" broke out in the camp. Thanks to the immediate response of the command and the camp doctors, only 41 recruits died, 25 of whom, with the permission of the authorities, were buried in the local Catholic cemetery of St. Vincent de Paul (worldwide, the pandemic of this flu claimed an estimated 30 million lives, far more than died on the fronts of the First World War).

In bringing the disease under control at the camp, the help of the people of Niagara on the Lake, including local women who volunteered to care for the sick soldiers, was not insignificant. One of the most active was Elizabeth Ascher, a reporter for the St. Catharines Standard, whom the Polish volunteers referred to as 'Angel of Mercy' or simply 'Mother', as she cared for the young soldiers with motherly concern. Interestingly, Ascher, who was born in Niagara in 1869, took such an interest in the struggle of the Polish volunteers for a free Poland that she constantly followed their fate and wrote about them for Canadian and American newspapers, and for many years organised fund-raisers to help Poland.

Here are the names of the Polish soldiers buried at the Haller Cemetery:

Boruszkowski Władysław , died January 21, 1919,

Bester Wawrzyniec , died January 25, 1919,

Byszewski Michał , died 8 October 1918,

Ciopak Bartłomiej , died 31 October 1918

Dolwa Józef , died 10 August 1918,

Głowacz Fryderyk , d. 30 September 1918,

Jakubas Wawrzyniec , d.o.b. 13 October 1918,

Kempiński Adam , d. 16 February 1919,

Kozłowski Kazimierz , died 18 September 1918

Krukowski Stanisław , died 22 October 1918

Kucia Jan , died 22 September 1918

Łoziński Piotr , died 26 September 1918

Marowicz Jan , died 4 January 1919,

Martin Adam , died 24 December 1917

Murawski Adam , d. 29 September 1918, Murawski Adam , d. 29 September 1918

Nowak Feliks , died 17 November 1918

Ptak Stanisław , d. 19 September 1918, Ptak Stanisław , d. 19 September 1918

Ronczka Wojciech , died 16 October 1918

Skop Antoni , d. 18 February 1919

Siatkowski Jan , died 25 February 1918

Sztopka Józef , died 22 September 1918

Wiśniewski Mateusz , died 15 March 1918

Witalec Walenty , d. 23 September 1918

Zarczyk Józef , d. 18 September 1918,

Rev. Col. Jan Józef Dekowski (1882-1949).

On the way to Poland

The camp, after 18 months of existence, was closed on 11 March 1919. The trained troops, numbering 20,720 soldiers and officers, were transported to the Polish Army in France, where they joined General Józef Haller's Blue Army. Volunteers from America and Canada participated in victorious battles at the front in France and later in 1920 in the Bolshevik-Polish War, contributing to the winning of a free and independent Poland. Many of them fell and never returned to their homes.

After Poland regained its independence in 1918, the area of the cemetery was handed over to our country. It is still a part of Polish territory to this day.

On 27 November 1923, Lieutenant General Józef Haller, in the presence of Dr Michał Straszewski, Consul General in Montreal, awarded the cemetery-monument to Polish soldiers with the Silver Cross of the Military Order of Virtuti Militari.

In 1949, the former chaplain of the Kosciuszko camp, Knight of the Order of Virtuti Militari, Father Jan Józef Dekowski (1882-1949), son of Polish emigrants in the United States, priest of the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit, also found his final resting place here. In early 1918, he arrived in France with Polish volunteers and became chaplain of the 3rd Rifle Regiment of the Polish Army. He took part in the fighting in the Vosges, where he distinguished himself during the German attack on Polish positions, setting an example of bravery and civic virtue by his behaviour. After the war, he settled in Canada. He was pastor of many Polish parishes in Ontario.

In 1992, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Polish Armed Action, the Polish community in America and Canada erected a field altar. This fact was commemorated with a plaque.

In 2000, the cemetery was extensively renovated, changing the old gravestones to new and larger ones.

Since 1919, when the local women of Niagara on the Lake, led by Elizabeth Ascher, went to the graves of Polish soldiers after mass in the local church and decorated them with bouquets of flowers, pilgrimages to the cemetery have been organised with the participation of Polish veteran and community organisations from Canada and the United States to pay tribute to the deceased soldiers and to honour the Polish Armed Forces and the memory of General Józef Haller's Army.

For You, Poland and for Your Glory - such was the motto of the Polish volunteers who joined the ranks of the so-called 'Blue Army' to fight for Poland's independence; such is also the motto of today's Polish pilgrimages to the Haller Cemetery in Niagara on the Lake.

Location: 73 Picton Street, Niagara on the Lake, Province of Ontario, Canada.