14th President of the Polish National Alliance

Born in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, Rozmarek earned a law degree from Harvard University and served in various public offices the field of justice in his home town. A PNA member from 1917, he became the president of the Polish students' circle in Boston in 1925. In 1931, he was appointed to the school board of Alliance College and in 1935 was an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency of the Alliance, narrowly losing to John Romaszkiewicz.

 

Elected president in 1939, he held office for twenty-eight years, the longest tenure in the history of the Alliance. Under Rozmarek's leadership membership surpassed 300,000 for the first time and the organization's net worth rose from approximately $30 million to $133 million. Possessing a leadership style both autocratic and charismatic in nature, Rozmarek was an eloquent speaker and a great politician both in and outside the Alliance.

 

Rozmarek's great accomplishment was in organizing and leading the Polish American Congress, the all-Polonia political action federation, in 1944. The PAC symbolized the realization of the hopes of generations of PNA members to unite Polonia's energies in support of a free Poland. Moreover, this movement, unlike earlier efforts such as the Polish National Department created in World War I, remained in existence as a permanent fixture in American Polonia and has maintained its commitment to the original purposes for which it was established.

 

As head of the PAC Rozmarek's greatest success was in winning congressional approval after World War II for special legislation enabling approximately 150,000 Poles to enter the U.S. and to build new lives for themselves in this country. Rozmarek's wife, Wanda, was deeply involved in the PNA and for many years directed the annual summer courses in Polish studies for teachers at the Alliance College.