Józef and Wiktoria Ulma were a Polish Catholic husband and wife in

Markowa Markowa is a village in Łańcut County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Markowa. It lies approximately south-east of Łańcut and east of the regional capit ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

during the Nazi German

occupation Occupation commonly refers to: *Occupation (human activity), or job, one's role in society, often a regular activity performed for payment *Occupation (protest), political demonstration by holding public or symbolic spaces *Military occupation, th ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

who attempted to rescue Polish Jewish families by hiding them in their own home during

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

. They and their children were summarily executed on 24 March 1944 for doing so.Mateusz Szpytma
"The Righteous and their world. Markowa through the lens of Józef Ulma"
, Institute of National Remembrance, Poland. Instytut Pamięci Narodowej
Wystawa „Sprawiedliwi wśród Narodów Świata”– 15 czerwca 2004 r., Rzeszów.
"Polacy pomagali Żydom podczas wojny, choć groziła za to kara śmierci – o tym wie większość z nas." (''Exhibition "Righteous among the Nations." Rzeszów, 15 June 2004. Subtitled: "The Poles were helping Jews during the war - most of us already know that."''); accessed 8 November 2008. Notably, despite the murder of the Ulmas—meant to strike fear into the hearts of villagers—their neighbours continued to hide Jewish fugitives until the

end of World War II in Europe The final battle of the European Theatre of World War II continued after the definitive overall surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allies, signed by Field marshal Wilhelm Keitel on 8 May 1945 in Karlshorst, Berlin. After German dictator Adolf H ...

. At least 21

Polish Jews The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the lo ...

survived in Markowa during the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany. They are regarded by the

State of Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

as Righteous Among the Nations and are due to be beatified in the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

Pope Francis Pope Francis ( la, Franciscus; it, Francesco; es, link=, Francisco; born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 17 December 1936) is the head of the Catholic Church. He has been the bishop of Rome and sovereign of the Vatican City State since 13 March 2013. ...

in 2023.

Biography

At the onset of

, Józef Ulma (born in 1900) was a prominent citizen in the village of Markowa: a librarian, a photographer, active in social life and the local Catholic Youth Association. He was an educated fruit grower and a bee-keeper. His wife Wiktoria (born Wiktoria Niemczak in 1912), was a homemaker. The Ulmas had six children: Stanisława, age 8, Barbara, age 7, Władysław, age 6, Franciszek, age 4, Antoni, age 3 and Maria, age 2. Another child was due to be born just days after the family's summary execution on 24 March 1944.

Wiktoria Ulma

Wiktoria Ulma, ''née'' Niemczak (10 December 1912 – 24 March 1944) was from

village near

Łańcut Łańcut (, approximately "wine-suit"; yi, לאַנצוט, Lantzut; uk, Ла́ньцут, Lánʹtsut; german: Landshut) is a town in south-eastern Poland, with 18,004 inhabitants, as of 2 June 2009. Situated in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship (si ...

. She was nine months pregnant at the time of her death. Wiktoria was born in

as the seventh child of Jan Niemczak and his wife Franciszka. At the age of six, Wiktoria lost her mother. She took courses at the

folk high school Folk high schools (also ''Adult Education Center'', Danish: ''Folkehøjskole;'' Dutch: ''Volkshogeschool;'' Finnish: ''kansanopisto'' and ''työväenopisto'' or ''kansalaisopisto;'' German: ''Volkshochschule'' and (a few) ''Heimvolkshochschule;'' ...

in Gać. In 1935, she married Józef Ulma, 12 years' her senior, with whom she had six children: Stanisława, age 8 at the time of her death, Barbara, age 7, Władysław, age 6, Franciszek, age 4, Antoni, age 3 and Maria, age 2 in 1944. Wiktoria was an educated housewife, taking care of the home and their children. Through hard work, persistence and determination, the Ulmas were able to purchase a bigger farm (5

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...

s in size) in Wojsławice near Sokal (now Ukraine), and had already begun planning a relocation when the war began. At the moment of her death, Wiktoria was about to give birth to their seventh child.

Holocaust rescue

In the summer and autumn of 1942, the Nazi

police The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and t ...

deported several Jewish families of Markowa to their deaths as part of the German Final solution to the Jewish question. Only those who were hidden in Polish peasants' homes survived. Eight Jews found shelter with the Ulmas: six members of the Szall (Szali) family from

including father, mother and four sons, as well as the two daughters of Chaim Goldman, Golda (Gienia) and Layka (Lea) Didner.Wlodzimierz Redzioch, interview with Mateusz Szpytma, historian from the Institute of National Remembrance (4 March 2016)
"They gave up their lives."
Tygodnik ''Niedziela'' weekly, 16/2007, Editor-in-chief: Fr Ireneusz Skubis

Częstochowa Częstochowa ( , ; german: Tschenstochau, Czenstochau; la, Czanstochova) is a city in southern Poland on the Warta River with 214,342 inhabitants, making it the thirteenth-largest city in Poland. It is situated in the Silesian Voivodeship (admin ...

, Poland. Internet Archive. Józef Ulma put all eight Jews in the attic. They learned to help him with supplementary jobs while in hiding, to ease the incurred expenses.

Arrest and execution

The Ulmas were denounced by Włodzimierz Leś, a member of the

Blue Police The Blue Police ( pl, Granatowa policja, Navy-blue police), was the police during the Second World War in German-occupied Poland (the General Government). The entity's official German name was ''Polnische Polizei im Generalgouvernement'' (Polish ...

, who had taken possession of the Szall (Szali) family's real estate in Łańcut in spring 1944 and wanted to get rid of its rightful owners. In the early morning hours of 24 March 1944 a patrol of German police from Łańcut under Lieutenant Eilert Dieken came to the Ulmas' house which was on the outskirts of the village. The Germans surrounded the house and caught all eight Jews belonging to the Szali and Goldman families. They shot them in the back of the head according to eyewitness Edward Nawojski and others, who were ordered to watch the executions. Then the German gendarmes killed the pregnant Wiktoria and her husband so that the villagers would see what punishment awaited them for hiding Jews. The six children began to scream at the sight of their parents' bodies. After consulting with his superior, 23-year-old Jan Kokott, a Czech

Volksdeutsche In Nazi German terminology, ''Volksdeutsche'' () were "people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship". The term is the nominalised plural of '' volksdeutsch'', with ''Volksdeutsche'' denoting a sin ...

r from

Sudetenland The Sudetenland ( , ; Czech and sk, Sudety) is the historical German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans. These German speakers had predominated in the ...

serving with the German police, shot three or four of the Polish children while the other Polish children were murdered by the remaining gendarmes. Within several minutes 17 people were killed. It is likely that during the mass execution Wiktoria went into labour because the witness to her exhumation testified that he saw a head of a newborn baby between her legs. The names of the other Nazi executioners are also known from their frequent presence in the village (Eilert Dieken, Michael Dziewulski and Erich Wilde). The village

Vogt During the Middle Ages, an (sometimes given as modern English: advocate; German: ; French: ) was an office-holder who was legally delegated to perform some of the secular responsibilities of a major feudal lord, or for an institution such as ...

( pl, Wójt) Teofil Kielar was ordered to bury the victims with the help of other witnesses. He asked the German commander, whom he had known from prior inspections and food acquisitions, why the children too had been killed. Dieken answered in German, "So that you would not have any problems with them." On 11 January 1945, in defiance of the Nazi prohibition, relatives of the Ulmas exhumed the bodies to bury them in the cemetery and found out that Wiktoria's seventh child had almost been born in the grave pit of its parents.

Commemoration

On 13 September 1995, Józef and Wiktoria Ulma were posthumously bestowed the titles of Righteous Among the Nations by

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

. On 24 March 2004 a stone memorial to honor memory of the Ulma family was erected in Markowa. Their medals of honor were presented to Józef's surviving brother, Władysław Ulma. Their certificate informs that they tried to save Jews at the risk of their lives, but fails to mention that they died for them, as noted in the book ''Godni synowie naszej Ojczyzny''. On the 60th anniversary of their execution, a stone memorial was erected in the village of Markowa to honor the memory of the Ulma family. The inscription on the monument reads: At the unveiling of the monument, the

Archbishop In Christian denominations, an archbishop is a bishop of higher rank or office. In most cases, such as the Catholic Church, there are many archbishops who either have jurisdiction over an ecclesiastical province in addition to their own archdi ...

Przemyśl Przemyśl (; yi, פשעמישל, Pshemishl; uk, Перемишль, Peremyshl; german: Premissel) is a city in southeastern Poland with 58,721 inhabitants, as of December 2021. In 1999, it became part of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship; it was pr ...

, Józef Michalik – the President of the Polish Bishops' Conference – celebrated a solemn

Mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...

. The local

diocesan In church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided provinces were administratively associate ...

level of the

Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

in Poland initiated the Ulmas'

beatification Beatification (from Latin ''beatus'', "blessed" and ''facere'', "to make”) is a recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a deceased person's entrance into Heaven and capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in their nam ...

process in 2003.Anna Domin (2015)
Słudzy Boży - Józef i Wiktoria Ulmowie z Dziećmi.
''Nasi patronowie.'' Stowarzyszenie Szczęśliwy Dom. Internet Archive. The Vatican Secretary of State

Cardinal Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to: Animals * Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **''Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae **''Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, the ...

Tarcisio Bertone spoke in Rome of the heroic Polish family on 24 January 2007 during the inauguration of the Italian edition of

Martin Gilbert Sir Martin John Gilbert (25 October 1936 – 3 February 2015) was a British historian and honorary Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. He was the author of eighty-eight books, including works on Winston Churchill, the 20th century, and Jewish h ...

's book ''I giusti. Gli eroi sconosciuti dell'Olocausto'' ("The Righteous. Unknown Heroes of the Holocaust"). Special commemorations were held in Markowa on 24 March 2007 – 63 years after the Ulma, Szall and Goldman families were massacred. Mass was celebrated, followed by the

Way of the Cross The Stations of the Cross or the Way of the Cross, also known as the Way of Sorrows or the Via Crucis, refers to a series of images depicting Jesus Christ on the day of his crucifixion and accompanying prayers. The stations grew out of imitati ...

with the intention of the Ulma family's beatification. Among the guests was the President of the Council of

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

, who laid flowers at the monument to the dead. The students of the local high school presented their own interpretation of the Ulmas' family decision to hide Jews in a short performance entitled ''Eight Beatitudes''. There was also an evening of poetry dedicated to the memory of the murdered. Older neighbors and relatives who knew them spoke about the life of the Ulmas. One historian from the Institute of National Remembrance presented archival documents; and, the Catholic diocesan

postulator A postulator is the person who guides a cause for beatification or canonization through the judicial processes required by the Roman Catholic Church. The qualifications, role and function of the postulator are spelled out in the ''Norms to be Obse ...

explained the requirements of the beatification process. On 24 May 2011, the completed documentation of their martyrdom was passed on to Rome for completion of the beatification process.Fight Hatred (27 May 2011)
"Sainthood for Martyred Polish Jew-Defenders"
Jabotinsky International Center; accessed 30 August 2016. A new Polish "National Day of the Ulma Family" has first been suggested by the former Prime Minister

Jarosław Kaczyński Jarosław Aleksander Kaczyński (; born 18 June 1949) is a Polish politician who is currently serving as leader of the Law and Justice party (known by its Polish acronym PiS), which he co-founded in 2001 with his twin brother, Lech Kaczyński, w ...

. Subsequently, the growing support for a more formal commemoration inspired the Sejmik of Podkarpackie Voivodeship to name 2014 the Year of the Ulma Family (''Rok Rodziny Ulmów''). The new Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in Markowa was scheduled to be completed in 2015. Polskie Radio (24 March 2014)
Ulmowie poświęcili życie by ratować Żydów. 70. rocznica niemieckiej zbrodni
(On the 70th Anniversary of the Ulma Martyrdom); PolskieRadio.pl; accessed 30 August 2016.

Cause of beatification and canonization

On 17 September 2003 the Pelplin Diocese's Bishop

Jan Bernard Szlaga Jan Bernard Szlaga (May 24, 1940 – April 25, 2012) was the Roman Catholic bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pelplin, Poland. He was born the youngest of six children of Jan and Helena (Sciesińska) Szlaga. Education and early career F ...

initiated beatification process of 122 Polish martyrs died during

, including Józef and Wiktoria Ulma with their six children among the others. On 20 February 2017 Congregation for the Causes of Saints allowed to take over management of the process of Ulma family by Roman Catholic

Archdiocese In church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided provinces were administratively associate ...

of Przemyśl. The fate of the Ulmas became a symbol of martyrdom of Poles killed by the Germans for helping Jews. On 17 March 2016 The Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II was opened in Markowa in presence of the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda. On 18 December 2022

declared that the entire family a

venerable The Venerable (''venerabilis'' in Latin) is a style, a title, or an epithet which is used in some Western Christian churches, or it is a translation of similar terms for clerics in Eastern Orthodoxy and monastics in Buddhism. Christianity Cathol ...

and would be beatified in 2023.

References

Sources

The Righteous and their world. Markowa through the lens of Józef Ulma, by Mateusz Szpytma
, Institute of National Remembrance, Poland * Gisele Hildebrandt, Otto Adamski
"Markowa"
''Dorfimfersuchungen in dem alten deutsch-ukrainischen Grenzbereich von Landshuf''. 1943. Kraków. *

* ttp://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/righteous/ulma.asp Józef and Wiktoria Ulmaat the Israeli Holocaust memorial

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ulma, Jozef And Wiktoria Married couples Polish Righteous Among the Nations Catholic Righteous Among the Nations 1944 deaths Polish people executed by Nazi Germany Polish Servants of God Polish Roman Catholics Polish civilians killed in World War II People from Łańcut County