For the first time in history, an entire family was beatified by the Catholic Church. It is about a Polish couple and their seven children, victims of Nazism. In 1944, they were assassinated for hiding Jews. This beatification decision was ratified by Pope Francis, who declared them blessed.
“May this Polish family, which represented a ray of light in the darkness of World War II, be a model for all of us to imitate in the spirit of good, in service to those in need,” said Sunday, September 10 Pope Francis. Thousands of people, including the Polish President and Prime Minister, priests, the Chief Rabbi of Poland and a delegation from Israel, took part in the ceremonies.
The tragedy dates back to March 24, 1944, when this village was the scene of a terrible massacre. Victims of a denunciation by a Polish policeman, Jozef Ulma, his wife Wiktoria, seven months pregnant and who will give birth during the shooting, are shot dead by the German police in front of their children. The latter, Stanislawa, Barbara, Wladyslav, Franciszek, Antoni and Maria, aged two to eight, were in turn executed, the house looted and then burned. Previously, eight Jews whom they had hidden in the attic of their farm were also shot.
The Nazis pepper the ceiling: the blood of the victims spills, a drop falls on a photo representing two Jewish women placed on a table below. This photo has been preserved to this day as a “relic” of the Jewish martyr.
Shaul Goldmann and his five children, including his daughter Lea, the latter’s five-year-old daughter Reshla, and Golda Grünfeld, are killed. After this execution, 24 Jews will also be killed in Markowa by their Polish neighbors.
During a trip to Markowa for a report on the local Church’s aid to Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war after the Russian invasion, an Italian journalist from the Ansa agency, Manuela Tulli, receives a collection of photos taken by Jozef Ulma, who in his spare time documents family life on the farm. It is a touching album, which traces the life of the family with everyday scenes, “we see the children running barefoot in the grass, doing homework, the mother hanging out the laundry”, describes Ms. Tulli, co-author of a book on tragedy with the Polish priest Pawel Rytel-Andrianik.
The Ulma couple received the medal and the title of Righteous awarded by the State of Israel. “It’s a story of love and friendship, when the Jews asked for help, they opened their door. They lived together for a year and a half, cooked and ate together,” says the Italian journalist.
Beyond the facts, this is the first time that the Church has granted beatification to an entire family. The Vatican also decided to beatify the child with whom Wiktoria was pregnant, whereas ordinarily an unbaptized person cannot be beatified. Because, according to the Dicastery for the Causes of the Saints, the Vatican department responsible for matters of beatification and canonization, the seventh child was born at the time of the martyrdom of the mother.
“The latter was therefore added to the number of children, martyrs too. In fact, in the martyrdom of the parents, he received the baptism of blood, “says a press release from the dicastery. In the case of this family, who died as martyrs, the Vatican does not need a miracle to grant beatification. A miracle is, however, indispensable for canonization, when a person is proclaimed holy or holy, even in the case of martyrs.
A museum named after the Ulma, dedicated to Poles who saved Jews, opened in Markowa in 2016. And, since 2018, Poland has dedicated March 24 to the memory of Poles who saved Jews during the German occupation.
