On 24 March 1944 Germans executed Wiktoria and Józef Ulma together with their 6 children as well as 8 Jews who were being hidden at their home.
The Ulmas are recognized as Rightous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem Institute and their life sacrifice serves as the leading story at the Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews During World War II.
"At the onset of World War II, 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.
In the summer and autumn of 1942, the German Nazi police 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 Łańcut including father, mother and four sons, as well as the two daughters of Chaim Goldman, Golda and Layka. 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.
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. They were informed ahead of time about the Jews in hiding by Włodzimierz Leś – a member of the Polish Blue Police – who was Ukrainian himself and who knew the Szall family from Łańcut and who took over their property there. The Germans surrounded the house and caught all eight Jews belonging to the Szall and Goldman families. They shot them in the back of the head according to eyewitness Edward Nawojski and others, who were ordered to look at 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 Volksdeutscher from Sudetenland serving with the German police, shot three or four of the Polish children while other Polish children were murdered by the remaining gendarmes. Within several minutes 17 people were killed.
The names of the other German executioners are also known due to their frequent presence in the village (Eilert Dieken, Michael Dziewulski and Erich Wilde). The village Vogt (Polish: 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 were also killed. Dieken answered in German, "So that you would not have any problems with them." On 11 January 1945, in defiance of the German prohibition, relatives of the Ulmas exhumed the bodies to bury them in the cemetery, and found out that Wiktoria's seventh child was almost born in the grave pit of her parents."(1)
Image source: Internet
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