The Ulma family - in the defense of human life
10.09.2023
On September 10, 2023, the beatification Mass of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma, and their seven children, was held in Markowa – the place of family’s death – in the Podkarpacie region.
The Ulma family, murdered in 1944 by Germans, gave shelter to eight Jews despite their poverty and threat to life: Saul Goldman and his four sons, as well as Chaim Goldman’s two daughters and granddaughter.
The service was presided over by the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro. President Andrzej Duda with his wife Agata Kornhauser Duda and other representatives of state authorities took part in the Eucharist.
The Polish President Andrzej Duda gave a speech in which he expressed his gratitude to the Pope for the beatification of the entire Ulma family. He reminded the importance of historical truth by emphasizing that there was no polish authorities on the German-occupied territory, nor polish armed formations which collabored with occupant’s troops.
The President stressed that “Poles and Jews have lived on this land for a thousand years. With different winds of history, with different events. Both of these nations, also within the framework of the great Republic of many nations, stayed together and coexisted with each other, developing their cultures, which often intertwined and constitute an element of our Polish culture today."
After the Eucharist Presidential Couple visited the War Cemetery of Victims of Nazism 1939–1945 in Jagielle–Niechciałki, where, in front of the Monument to the Remembrance of Jewish Citizens of the Second Polish Republic, murdered in Markowa in 1942–1944, they laid a white and red wreath.
In 1995, Wiktoria and Józef Ulma were honoured with the title of Righteous Among the Nations. In 2010, the President of the Republic of Poland, Lech Kaczyński awarded them the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. In 2003, the beatification process of the Ulma family has begun in the Przemyśl diocese, and after 20 years, in Markowa it has finally officialised. Each year, the remembrance of the Ulma family will be celebrated on July 7 "in places and in the manner specified by law."