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Polish Government Wipes Poland's New York Off The Map
Warsaw, Poland 18 January 2010 - The town of New York is among a number of places that was wiped off the Polish map as Poland changed its calendar to 2010.
The minister of internal affairs and administration made the decision to wipe off the map place names that were customary or unused.
Among these places were New York, Homily and In The Field.
Well, those are the literal translations of the small Polish towns that history forgot.
All in all, as the clock ticked over to midnight on New Year’s Eve, 365 places simply ceased to exist.
When the news got in, Polish media flocked to New York with their journalists and film crews looking for displaced Polish citizens. Only to find that the town, which was all but boarded up and shut down years ago, was going to be wiped off a map it was never even on.
It turns out that New York was a nick-name given to the area by a former parish priest, now deceased, many years ago. For the most part, the nick-name died with him. One resident, Antoni Rybka, said many young New Yorkers didn’t even know about New York. It only exists in the memories of some few residents, the only place the ministry can’t remove it from.
The story of how the name came to the town is a sweet one actually. The village administrator of Lagiewniki, Stefan Rowinski, describes his town as “a cabin here, 2 hectares of field, another cabin, a hectare of forest and three cabins. Other than the postman and people who lived at a given address, no one know which (number) was which”.
The parish priest was planning his Christmas caroling one year, and basically announced that first he would be downtown, then in “Szmacionie”, at the edges of the village and finally in New York, beyond the forest, periphery. But why he called it that will remain a mystery.
But Polish newspaper “Fakt” wasn’t going to let the news get in the way of a good story. They painted a desperate picture of the picturesque town and charming people that time forgot, who were mercilessly crushed and devastated by the cruel villain that is the Government.
The truth is that no GPS device was going to locate New York for you before the change. Well not other than the one in the USA, anyway.
By Victoria Ziarkowski
Freelance Writer
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