Józef and Wiktoria Ulma and their seven children were beatified in Markowa in the Podkarpacie region. The beatification Mass was presided over by Pope Francis’ envoy, the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro.
Attending the service, President Andrzej Duda stressed that this event had an extremely important state meaning and “in an emphatic, institutional way, emphasises the historical truth about the times of German, Nazi occupation of Polish lands during World War II, about the then criminal German legislation on this land, which was the basic cause of this tragedy and this terrible crime that was committed against the Polish family”.
In his sermon, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro pointed out that “the reunion of Jewish and Catholic families in the same martyrdom contains a very deep meaning and sheds the most beautiful light on Jewish-Christian friendship”.
On 24 March 1944, the entire Ulma family was murdered by the Germans for helping Jews. On that day, the occupiers also killed eight people hidden in the Ulma home from the Goldman, Gruenfeld, Szall and Didner families.
The ceremony was addressed on social media by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who wrote: “Instead of asking by what right the Ulmas put their children at risk, one should ask by what right the Germans murdered innocent Polish children”.
Minister of Education and Science Przemysław Czarnek, commenting on the beatification said that “this is a historical event in every respect”. A whole family with children was beatified. For the first time in history an unborn child was beatified”, added Czarnek.
According to estimates, nearly 40,000 people attended the beatification mass. The President of Poland Andrzej Duda and his wife Agata Kornhauser-Duda, the Marshal of the Sejm Elżbieta Witek, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the President of the Law and Justice Party Jarosław Kaczyński, the Deputy Marshal of the Senate Marek Pęk, as well as members of the Committee for the Celebrations Accompanying the Beatification of the Ulma Family, headed by Grażyna Ignaczak-Bandych and appointed on the initiative of the President, arrived in Markowa.
Adrian Andrzejewski