Roman Płoszaj was born in the Podkarpacie region of Poland. He was raised and educated in Leżajsk. His had a successful career in forestry. The growing financial pressures linked to the expenses of building his own home in Poland led to his decision to go to the US. Roman emigrated on December 6, 1986. He left his family in Poland – wife, daughter and mother, because the stay in the US was supposed to have been of short duration, only until he earned enough money to cover the expenses of home construction.
When he arrived in New York, he moved into a place in India Street, Greenpoint. He shared a 3-bedroom flat, a so-called sabłej[Polish-American slang, transl. note], with seven other workers. His first job was at a carwash, where he worked in excess of 12 hours daily. His next job was at a joinery. He supplemented his income with jobs in home renovations.
He also worked at a waste sorting plant, where he was involved in an accident and almost lost his hand. The company wasn’t operating legally, so Roman had to fight a very long legal battle to be granted compensation. He was assisted by his wife and daughter who arrived in the US. Eventually, the court battle resulted in Roman being granted a life-long disability pension.
Following his accident Roman worked as a New York tour guide, taking groups of Polish tourists on tours around the city. He also toured the United States during a two-month trip around the country.
In Roman’s recollections of the past, towards the end of the 80’s there were streets in Greenpoint where the majority of residents were Polish immigrants, and Polish was the only language spoken in public. The immigrants kept all their earnings at the Credit Union. Roman moved out of Greenpoint due to the rising rental costs.
Interview conducted by Karolina Łukasiewicz and Ewa Dżurak on 20 October 2015 in New York City as part of the project called “Greenpoint. Transformations 2015”. More on cultureshock.pl.
I was building a house and I needed a bit more money. Back then, in 1986, PolCargo, our company, wasn’t thriving anymore. Anyway, it was dissolved a bit later. In 1986, my friend got a fake invitation for me and I paid him one hundred and fifty dollars for it. He was here and he came to Poland. He said: “I’ll get you a job. Just come to me. You’ll work for about six months and you’ll come back, finish building your house.” And so, I came here just for a couple of months but it all turned out differently. So, I thought that I’ll come here, work a little, make some money and come back. How was it? We came. It was in India Street in an apartment. There were eight of us in the subway so you can imagine. There were three rooms in total, including the kitchen. Two or three people were sleeping in one room. There were just mattresses and when we all lay down, without any ventilation whatsoever and there was this poor heating, and the filth, the smell... This is how the Poles used to live back then. You paid really little, of course, 50 or 60 dollars per person. And this was the first time I’ve seen the cockroaches. There were millions of them everywhere. In Poland it was just unimaginable because we used to live in totally different conditions in Poland.
New York made a very bad impression on me. Everything. In those days even Poland seemed better in comparison to the conditions I experienced here. That was a shock for me. I imagined that the streets here would be beautiful and the apartments clean. Now everything has changed. It’s incomparable. Back then those wooden bungalows, like today most of them still are, but there are also other kinds, and noone cared about the employees. Nobody mentioned anything about social conditions. All that counted was the dollar and the money you’ve earned. How to make the money and send it to Poland, to help the family.
Greenpoint was mainly a Polish district. You could rarely meet a foreigner there. Everything was in Polish. All shops were Polish. Everyone spoke Polish, all signs, everything was Polish. The famous dances at the National Home in Driggs were really something. Now it’s called the “Warsaw Club”. Before that it was the National Home where all the events, all bands, when some bands managed to leave Poland, organized their performances there. Later, the Polish and Slavic Center started organizing some events as well. There was a room also but mostly the National Home was the main entertainment with the famous Saturday dances. Later, I moved to... I was living in Driggs Leonard so when they were leaving the place at two or three a.m. on Sunday I couldn’t sleep and, at the time, I was sleeping by the window. So, when a crowd gathered before the building and they all started talking, swearing all the time... when those Poles were talking like that I had no idea what to do about it. So, I had this idea, most people did it anyway. I took a bucket and poured water on a group of people from the window and it all went quiet for some time [laughing]. They all cursed a little but moved along and I had my peace and quiet. I could sleep until morning. At the time, that was the only entertainment in Greenpoint. The entire Polish diaspora took part only in such events and dances. Later, the Polish and Slavic Center was established. There was the Credit Union and people... Well, everyone went there and you didn’t have to have any document on you. You just needed a passport to open an account at the Credit Union, which is now impossible. So, all the money people earned they paid to the Credit Union and sent to Poland via PKO. This is how it was done back then. Anyway, it was different emigration. People mostly came from villages. They had no vocational training. They didn’t know the language, we all came like that back then. We had nothing to do with English. In Poland, we couldn’t learn English. So, we had to take on the hardest jobs, do renovations or work at car washes.
Those Christmas were very sad, you know, among strangers. People, I don't want to judge them, but they were only occupied with drinking something, having parties. There was no watching anything or preparing a dinner. We shared the Christmas wafer, drank some and that was it. Some went to midnight mass but after that it was all the same. I had no family here, no one with whom... Only people I lived with. Their one and only occupation was making money and sending it back home. Their only entertainment was drinking alcohol.
The Polish-American organizations didn’t help me much. Even when the Polish-Slavonic Center back then... At the Polish-Slavonic Center they had this unit which asissted people with legal matters, so I also tried to get some help, but this one gentleman, who... he’s dead now, you know... he said that I have a family in Poland and so he cannot help me with anything. I felt very sad that he had this attitude. It basically meant: you have a family in Poland, so go back to Poland, this is not the place for you. That’s the kind of treatment I got back then. But this man is no longer around. He died. If he tried to be of assistance back then, it was back in ‘88, or ‘89, I would have been granted my legal residence permit a lot earlier. And then I’m sure, my life would have been different. In any case I had been here mostly as an illegal immigrant, for a very long time. Later, my daughter who arrived here helped me. She came on the green card lottery visa with her mother and it was them who helped me with legalizing my status in the end... After twenty years I finally got permanent residence.
Nowdays it has all changed - Polish people who come here, or our children, are educated, skilled professionals. A big difference, they can speak English and they are able to find a very different kind of employment They don’t go into home renovations, don’t slave away like those back then, but they go and get office jobs or start their own business. So it is different. When I look at my daughter, she has a good job in Manhattan. Gets a good salary. She has... basically, she can afford everything. Her husband runs his own company, which hires both Poles and Ukrainians at the moment, well, immigrants. So they both have good salaries - she has and so does he. They can afford everything. They travel, at the moment they... His parents have a vacation house in Mexico, so they often go there... they go to Mexico on holiday for a week. Yes, they lead a different lifestyle. It cannot be compared to the life of those immigrants back then. It feels very different. They blend into their local surroundings and are not the kind of people we used to be - simply exploited and for whom it only mattered to make the money and run.
One does not need to work any more. There are clubs, there is everything. It is a good life here... It’s tolerable. At the moment. There is plenty of entertainment. I have always tried to live here, travel around the states, explore the surroundings, get to know New York. I even worked as a New York tour guide for a while. I was a tour guide for organized Polish tour groups. That used to happen. Well you could say that...Florida, I’ve been to Florida a few times. That is I mostly visited the central part. I have been there three times. Then I got to know this later... basically, I’ve also been to Chicago and went on a tour of all the States with... It was an organized private trip, half private, half... We spent nearly two months travelling in the States. From the Atlantic to the Pacific side. So we visited a dozen or so states. I have a general idea. I’ve been to the Grand Canyon, to Las Vegas several times, that’s true. I’ve been to more than a dozen states, ticked them off the list, I know what’s it like to live here and I know what the other states look like.
My decision was the worst decision in my life. It doesn’t have to end like that but it was the biggest mistake of my life for me to come here. I shouldn’t have left Poland in the first place. Everything would have been different. Back then, in 1986 we were supposed to go with PolCargo to Belgrade on training and it was all cancelled because Yugoslavia was breaking apart. If that had not happened, I think I wouldn’t have come here at all. And maybe a decisive factor was that I had no problems with my passport because at the time people had problems with that. And since I was supposed to go to Yugoslavia to training, I had my passport so all I had to do was to go to a consul and... And I got an invitation. It was a fake one but still I had it. I had no problems getting the necessary documents. I only asked what they required of me and I was ready to get every piece of document to present to the consul. So, I gave him everything he wanted. Documents on my earnings, a statement that I won’t be getting back, that I won’t be staying, all papers confirming that I met all my obligations, etc. That was it and I could get all that at the time. And people had a lot of problems with the papers. I had access to all documents so I could talk rubbish to the consul, support it with fake certificates and papers and, at the time, he had no reservations whatsoever. So, after the first conversation I encountered no problems and, at the time, about ninety per cent people couldn’t get visas. And all my friends who stayed in Poland have high-ranking posts and... or they are even millionaires [laughing]. Really... Because at the time a wicker farm was cheap to buy and now those people who invested their money in that business are really wealthy. So, I made the wrong decision but that might have been the only one if I hadn’t had the accident. The accident had its impact on everything that happened later. I had no idea what to do after the accident and it was 1987. I was an invalid. In Poland I had no chance to fix that, I had no means to support myself here, I had to fight to get something for myself. And when I managed to sort all that out, then everything went to pieces back there. So... Anyway, I should be happy with what I have. This is how my life turned out and that’s that. One makes mistakes. One can only warn others not to leave Poland so fast.
