Since 2018, by the decision of the Polish parliament, on March 24, Poland has been celebrating the National Day of Remembrance of Poles saving Jews. The date was not chosen by chance – on that day in 1944 the Ulma family from the village of Markowa near Łańcut was shot by the Germans for hiding 8 Jews.
During the German occupation, that place belonged to the Krakow district. The Ulmas’ house was located on the outskirts of the village, away from peasant buildings, perhaps that was why the family took the risk of hiding Jewish fugitives.
Józef and Wiktoria (née Niemczak) Ulma and their six children lived modestly before the war, running a farm specializing in vegetables and fruit. The head of the family graduated from the agricultural school in Pilzno with honors. Józef also dealt with beekeeping and silkworm farming. In his spare time, he was passionate about bookbinding and photography. His latter passion brought hundreds of clichés of his wife, daughters and sons. Family happiness was recorded there, including children, home and its immediate surroundings. Currently, there is no trace of this farm. Moreover, Józef Ulma was active in Markowa as a librarian in the Catholic Youth Club and in the “Wici” Rural Youth Union.
Probably at the end of 1942, the Ulmas took in Jewish refugees from Łańcut and Markowa. They stored them in the attic. It was the Goldman family from Łańcut: Saul Goldman, who traded in cattle before the war, and his four sons. Soon, the people in hiding were also joined by two daughters and a granddaughter of Chaim Goldman from Markowa – Lea Didner with a daughter of an unknown name and Genia (Gołda) Grünfeld.
The Ulmas also helped the Tencer family. They helped build a forest hiding place for the Jews. It was a dugout located in a nearby ravine. Unfortunately, it was discovered during a German raid and its inhabitants were killed.
It is significant that the Ulmas did not hide much about the fact that they helped Jews – many of the villagers knew about it, and everything indicated that thanks to their solidarity, the story of help would end happily. Some Jews even actively helped in the farm work, especially in the tanning of skins that the Ulma family did during the war. The daily bustle and work were even photographed. They hid in the shelter in the attic only at night or in times of danger.
The atmosphere in the Ulmas’ house was good – the building standing off the beaten track was surrounded by a garden full of flowers and trees. The photos that remain after the Ulmas show smiling and calm people, devoted to rural everyday life. They do not show that there was a war around and that keeping eight Jews in the attic, in the territory of the General Government could be punished with the death penalty. This does not mean, however, that the occupation terror did not reach Markowa. They saw death up close – the windows of the Ulma house overlooked the so-called trench where Jews from the vicinity were shot.
The time of relative peace was interrupted by a denunciation by an officer of the Polnische Polizei, Włodzimierz Leś, who for some time also helped the Jews hidden by the Ulmas. However, when the Jewish refugees began to demand that he give them back the part of the property that had previously been entrusted to him for safekeeping, he decided to get rid of them.
The crime was prepared on the night of March 23-24, 1944. The expedition was personally led by the commander of the Łańcut gendarmerie, Lieutenant Eilert Dieken. By his order that the children ( 8-year-old Stanisława, 6-year-old Barbara, 5-year-old Władysław, 4-year-old Franciszek, 3-year-old Antoni and 18-year-old Maria) and Wiktoria Ulma, who was heavily pregnant, were also murdered. During the execution, one of the perpetrators said the following words: “Look how Polish pigs are killed for hiding Jews.” When all were shot, the house of the murdered family was robbed by the Germans. The officers of the Polnische Polizei also participated in the action under the German order.
In January 1945, after the end of the German occupation, the remains of the Ulmas were exhumed and buried in the parish cemetery in Markowa. Also, the bodies of the murdered Jews were exhumed in February 1947 and moved to the Cemetery of the Victims of Hitlerism in Jagiello-Niechciałki.
Undoubtedly, the crime in Markowa in 1944, in which 16 people died, is today a symbol of the martyrdom of Polish society murdered for providing support and help to people of Jewish nationality. Only after 51 years, the knowledge of what happened in this village began to slowly reach the general consciousness. On September 13, 1995, the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem honored the Polish heroes with the title of ” Righteous Among the Nations “, and in 2004, a dedicated monument commemorating the crime was unveiled in Markowa. Moreover, by order of the President of the Republic of Poland Lech Kaczyński on January 25, 2010, the Ulma couple was posthumously awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta . Currently, in Markowa there is a museum entirely devoted to this family and its heroic activities during the German occupation. It was created thanks to the efforts of the current vice-president of the Institute of National Remembrance – Dr Mateusz Szpytma.
The number of Poles saving Jews is constantly growing, despite of many years since the end of the Second World War. We will probably not know their final number. Currently, there are about 7,000 Righteous Poles, the largest national group honored with the medal “Righteous Among the Nations”.