Poland has always been a multiethnic, multicultural nation-state, and the lives and identities of Polish-Americans reflect that. Polish immigrants were a part of the first Roanoke colony in 1585. Two of the military heroes of the American Revolution were Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kościuszko, both of Polish descent. But the first significant wave of Polish immigration came not long after the American Revolution when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was partitioned by Prussia, Russia and Austria.
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