Blessed Józef and Wiktoria Ulma and their Seven Children

Biography

The cause concerns the martyrdom of the whole Ulma family in the persecution of the Jews unleashed in Poland after the Nazi invasion of 1939. In 1942, after Hitler's decision to carry out the final solution, the Ulmas took into their house the Jewish family of Saul Goldmann, eight people in all, and hid them for a year and a half despite the danger and their own straitened means. On 24 March 1944 gendarmes searched the house, found the Goldmanns and killed both families. Józef Ulma, born at Markowa on 2 March 1900, had trained at the agricultural school of Pilzno; he farmed, traded in vegetables, grew fruit and taught the village beekeeping and silkworm rearing, tanned leather, ran a dairy cooperative, served as librarian of the Catholic Youth Circle and was on good terms with his Jewish neighbours. Wiktoria Niemczak, born at Markowa on 10 December 1912, married him in 1935 and gave herself to the house and children while sharing his parish life and the amateur theatre. Their children were Stanisława, Barbara, Władysław, Franciszek, Antoni and Maria, and the seventh, born as their mother died, was found when the family was exhumed for a worthier burial.