Armenians in Poland

Armenians in Poland (Հայերը Լեհաստանում; Ormianie w Polsce) have an important and historical presence going back to the 14th century. According to the Polish census of 2011, there are 3,623 self-identifying Armenians in Poland. About the beginning of the Armenian presence in Poland, Adolf Nowaczyński, a Polish writer, gives us the following sketch of the Armenians of Poland: Long before the fall of the (Armenian) Kingdom of Cilicia in 1375, the Armenians appeared in Poland, having been invited here by David Igorevich, the Prince of Galicia. The first dismemberment of their country brought about a great emigration. The Armenian emigrants, taking with them a handful of native soil in a piece of cloth, were scattered in southern Russia, into the Caucasus, in the land of the Cossacks, while 50,000 from among them came to Poland. From then on, new streams of Armenian emigration periodically proceeded from the shores of Pontus towards the hospitable country of the Sarmatians, and it must be said that these guests, coming from such a distance, proved themselves really 'the salt of the earth,' an exceedingly useful and desirable element. They settled mostly in the cities, and in many places they became the nucleus of the Polish bourgeois class. The city of Lwów, (now Lviv), the most patriotic center of Poland, then the theater of so many historic turmoils, owes its luster in large degree to Armenian immigrants. Kamieniec-Podolski (Kamianets-Podilskyi), that crown of Polish old fortresses, received its fame from the Armenians who settled there. Fleeing from Crimea, they were invited to settle in Jazłowiec, where they founded the church of the Holy Mother of God, now dedicated to Saint Nicholas of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. In Bukowina and in all Galicia, the Armenian element plays a role of the first order in political and social life, in industry and in intellectual movement. Finally, in Poland proper and its capital, Warsaw, the descendants of those who once were the great nation on the Arax, rendered themselves illustrious in all careers.