A Polish couple and their seven children, who were killed by the Nazis during World War II for hiding Jews, were beatified this Sunday, the first time an entire family has received one of Catholicism’s highest honors.
Cardinal Marcello Semeraro led the ceremony in the family’s hometown of Markowa, in southeastern Poland, which was attended by thousands of people, including the president and prime minister, bishops, priests, the country’s chief rabbi and an Israeli delegation.
“May this Polish family, who represented a ray of light in the darkness of the Second World War, be a model for all of us to imitate in the impulse of kindness, in the service of those in need,” Pope Francis said this Sunday.
It was in Markowa, on March 24, 1944, that German police, acting on a tip-off, shot dead Jozef Ulma and his wife Wiktoria, who was seven months pregnant and partially gave birth during the execution.
Their children, Stanislawa, Barbara, Wladyslav, Franciszek, Antoni and Maria, aged between two and eight, were also murdered, along with the eight Jews the family had hidden in the attic.
The eight – Shaul Goldmann and his five children, including daughter Lea Didner and her five-year-old daughter, and Golda Gruenfeld – were also shot dead before the family farm was set on fire.
Police fired into the attic from the floor below, “and the victims’ blood began to drip from the ceiling… onto a photo of two Jewish women lying on a table below,” according to Vatican News.
That photo “has been preserved as a ‘relic,’” Vatican News confirmed.
Baptism of blood
The massacre followed “a story of love and friendship”, according to Italian journalist Manuela Tulli, who wrote a book about the family with Polish historian and priest Pawel Rytel-Andrianik.
“When the Jews asked for help, they opened their doors to them. They lived together for a year and a half, cooking and eating together”Tulli informed AFP.
In addition to being a farmer, Jozef Ulma was also an enthusiastic photographer. The photographs he took, which have been preserved, show the family’s life through simple, everyday scenes.
“We see the children running barefoot in the grass, doing their homework, while the mother hangs up the clothes,” Tulli explains.
The families were reported by a Polish police officer. After their execution, about 24 Jews from Markowa were murdered by their Polish neighbors.
The Ulma family is the first to be beatified, a fundamental step toward sainthood in the Catholic Church. And in a rare move, the Ulmas’ newborn seventh child was also given the title of “blessed.”
According to the Vatican, the child was eligible for beatification through the concept of “blood baptism” because he was born “at the moment of the mother’s martyrdom.” Normally, people must have performed a miracle to qualify for beatification, but martyrs are exempt.
Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma were recognized by Israel in 1995 as members of the “Righteous Among the Nations,” an honor given to non-Jews who tried to save Jews from the Nazis.
The family also has a museum in their honor in Markowa, and in 2018 Poland declared March 24 – the date of the massacre – as a day of remembrance for Poles who saved Jews during the German occupation.
Source: DN
