Why Bytow?

   

The city of Bytow is spelled Bytów in Polish and pronounced BIT-oof. It is situated in the Kashubian region of Poland.  As such, some of its inhabitants still proudly speak Kashubian, a cousin to the official language of Polish. So, for example, the Kashubian name of the city is Bëtowò, pronounced buh-TOH-vuh.
The Kashubian-speaking Polish immigrants arriving to Winona in the late 19th century came largely from an area within a 25-mile radius of Bytow.  In fact, so the story goes, our museum’s founder did not realize he was speaking a mixture of Kashubian and Polish on his first trip to Poland.
Thus, it was only natural to partner with a city located in an area of Kashubia that most of Winona’s Polish immigrants had once called home. Check out our What Is a Kashubian? page for a more in-depth look.  The city of Bytow’s official webpage features many beautiful views of the city. 

Bytow and Winona — Sister Cities

Our museum’s founder, the late Father Paul Breza, was a Winona native of Kashubian Polish ancestry.  He founded the museum in 1979 with the goal of celebrating and preserving the Polish and Kashubian cultural heritage of the community. Several trips to Bytow in the late 1980s and 1990s culminated in the establishment of a sister city partnership between Winona and Bytow in 2004.

 

 

Collaboration between the two communities continues to this day with numerous reciprocal visits, events, and exhibits. One important initiative is the student exchange program for high school students in coordination with the Winona Area Public Schools and financed in part by the museum. The collaboration and student exchange between the two sister cities furthers the educational and cultural promotion mission of the museum.