OXFORD’S Polish community will come together this weekend for an annual celebration – and everyone is welcome to join in.

May 3 is the national day of Poland and Polish people who’ve settled in the city will hold a number of events aimed at community integration.

“Poles are the largest ethnic minority in the UK, over a million of us contributes to the society”, said Mrs Ewa Gluza, who chairs the Oxford Polish Association.

“We have learned a great deal here and adopted many British customs, so we want to return the favour by sharing our heritage. So we invite everyone to join us for the upcoming events”.

Today, the Polish national will fly over Oxford Town Hall. Polish residents and students will gather there for a toast at 4.30pm to ‘take the opportunity to thank our British friends for your generous hospitality and sympathy’, as the event flyer says.

Dorota Kolarska, who co-chairs OxSocPol, an organisation of Polish students in Oxford, said: “[It’s not only about] Poland’s history, for example the Solidarity movement and constitution from 1791, but also about the influence that Poles have on contemporary British society.

“ Only this year Kuba Winkowski, who lives in Oxfordshire, was named the Chef of the Year in the UK, and Natan Wegrzycki-Szymczyk was on the Cambridge team that won this year’s boat race.”

Students from the Oxford Polish Society have organised a concert of a Polish folk song and dance with the band Mazury for this Sunday. It takes place from 5.30pm at St Johns College, St Giles.

On Monday, May 6, Oxford Polish Association invites everyone for a Diversity Picnic at the Blackbird Leys Community Centre.

Mrs Gluza said: “This event is planned as an integration opportunity. We organise a number of activities throughout the year, for example egg decorating before Easter and food-sharing on Christmas Eve. This year we want to celebrate 15 years of Polish presence in the European Union and show Oxford’s partnership with Wroclaw, but mainly we’re focused on giving our neighbours an opportunity to meet their Polish neighbours.”

Admission to the event is free.

“Britons are attending our events just to ask for a Polish flag, because they have a Polish neighbour or co-workers and want to make them welcome. We had one child, who came back from school totally in love with their Polish friends and said they ‘want to be Polish from now on’”.

This is the third year of Polish Heritage Days in the UK and 150 events will take place around the country, all organised in celebration of Polish National Day, May 3.

On this day in 1791, Parliament of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth adopted a new constitution - the second modern constitution in the world (after America).

It was the last-moment effort to save a partially sovereign state, which had been slowly torn apart by its powerful neighbours.

It was too late – adopting a constitution was followed by a short war against the Russian Empire, and after being defeated Poland was partitioned by Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Prussian empires. In 1795 it disappeared from the map.

Poles waited for 123 years to regain sovereignty in 1918 following the First World War.

Since 2015, when a far-right Law and Justice party got into power and started bending and breaking the law, May the 3rd became a day of anti-governmental demonstrations in Poland.