Poles in Romania


According to the 2021 Romanian census, 2,137 Poles live in Romania, mainly in the villages of Suceava County. There are three exclusively Polish villages, as follows: Nowy Sołoniec, Plesza, and Pojana Mikuli, as well a significant Polish presence in Kaczyca and Paltynosa. There is also a relatively sizable number of ethnic Poles living in the county seat, Suceava.
Poles in Romania form an officially recognised national minority, having one seat in the Chamber of Deputies and access to Polish elementary schools and cultural centres.

History

The first Poles settled in Moldavia in the times of Casimir III. Most of the Poles immigrating after 1774 were looking for work. So it was that Polish miners from Bochnia and Wieliczka were brought to salt mines in Cacica.
Another wave of Polish immigration arrived in Bukovina in the early 19th century, when the region was a crownland of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as was a significant portion of present-day southern Poland.
Around 1803, Polish highlanders from Čadca settled in Treblecz by Siret, in Stara Huta Krasna and in Kaliczanka and again in 1814 to 1819, this time settling in Hliboka and Tereszna. Nowy Sołoniec was settled in 1834, Plesza in 1835, and Pojana Mikuli in 1842.
At that time, it must be mentioned that Bukovina was a very attractive region of the Austrian Empire to live in thanks to Austria's policy not to conscript recruits into its army from there.
Furthermore, Bukovina was free from serfdom, primarily attracting immigrants of German, Jewish, and also Czecho-Slovak origin but also Polish ethnicity and even Russian and Italian.
There were probably other waves of migration from Poland after the November and Kraków Uprisings, but most Poles were from peasant families relocated there by the Empire's authorities after they participated in the Jakub Szela insurrection.
During World War I, Lucjan Skupiewski, Polish physician born in Warsaw, was the organizer and manager of all hospitals for the wounded in the Bucharest area. After the war, he stayed in Romania, and was the deputy deputy mayor of Bucharest and senator for the Polish minority.
Following the restoration of independent Poland, since 1919, many Poles left Bukovina for Poland. Four Polish newspapers were issued in Romania in the interbellum. The largest urban concentrations of Poles in Romania were Cernăuți, Bucharest, Chișinău, Sadagura, Storojineț and Bălți, according to the 1930 Romanian census. The Polonia Cernăuți Polish football club was active in Cernăuți, and was one of the top teams in the region of Bukovina, winning several regional championships and reaching the quarterfinals of the national Romanian championships three times.
During World War II, a portion of northern and eastern Romania was annexed by the Soviet Union, including the Cernăuți, Storojineț and Bălți counties, which were home to sizeable Polish populations of 15,243, 7,985 and 3,165 people, respectively, according to the 1930 Romanian census. After the war, many Poles from the sizeable Polish communities in Bukovina and Lupeni were repatriated to Poland.

Communes with the highest Polish population percentage

Notable Polish Romanians