They Are People, And I Will Not Throw Them Out
At first glance, there’s nothing particularly special about the portrait.
It might have been of our parents or grandparents.
It’s somewhat stilted.
More than eighty years old, it quintessentially from a different time and culture.
She is seated - posed – on his lap, eyes closed as if seeing a world beyond the moment.
With a broad forehead and jaw firmly set, he stares past her and, seemingly, into a future neither could imagine.
The ease with which his left hand settles above her right wrist gives a sense of a bond between the two.
Yet, to the few who know the story of Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma, the portrait is as powerfully evocative as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (“the Wall) or Michelangelo’s Pieta.
Heroism beyond words.
Quiet, simple service.
Family.
An example of goodness and courage missing in much of today’s political world.
In truth, an example of goodness never before recognized in more than two millennia of Christian history.
On Sunday, September 10 in a soccer field the tiny village of Markowa, Poland – fifty miles from the Polish-Ukrainian border, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, one of the highest-ranking clergy of the Roman Catholic Church, did the unthinkable. The prefect (director) of the Church’s Dicastery (Vatican office) for the Causes of Saints declared Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma and their six children and their child murdered as he or she was being born “Blessed” and worthy of veneration.
Highlighted in red pencil in the Ulma family bible, The Parable of the Good Samaritan was a reading from the Mass of their beatification:
“Jesus said, ‘A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. By chance a certain priest was going down that way. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way a Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he travelled, came where he was. When he saw him, he was moved with compassion, came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. He set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the host, and said to him, 'Take care of him. Whatever you spend beyond that, I will repay you when I return.'
“‘Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?’
“He said, ‘He who showed mercy on him.’
“Then Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’”
Jozef, 35, married Wiktoria Niemczak, twelve years his junior, on July 7, 1935. He had completed only four years of elementary school and later studied at the Pilzno Agricultural School. But Jozef was more than a small farmer; he was a pioneer, introducing innovative solutions to growing fruits and vegetables, breeding silkworms and beekeeping, even developing his own design for hives. With a farm of only one hectare – about two and a half acres, he was credited with introducing the first apple trees in Markowa and headed the local milk producers cooperative. He also developed a small wind farm and built a radio – all using books and magazines. Yet his real passion was photography. He assembled his first camera himself, read extensively on the subject and, as he acquired more professional equipment, became the only photographer in the village. As a result, everyone knew Jozef. To this day, his photographic archive of events small and large remains one of the most vivid records of Markowa during the war years.
Wiktoria, whose mother died who she was only eight and step mother died a year before her marriage to Jozef, was artistic, creative and faithful in her religious practices. Growing up, family life was marked by a single rule: No one who came to them for help could leave the house without something done for them. She was the rock of the family.
The family library – with books on the wilderness of Australia, an atlas, and a dictionary of foreign terms - reflected their curiosity about the larger world. It also included a biography of St. Josaphat (1580 – 1623), a Greek Catholic venerated as a martyr, lived in the same part of Europe.
German forces invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, followed by troops of the Soviet Union ten days later. Polish forces were overwhelmed. Warsaw was razed and six million Polish citizens – half of them Jews – perished. Millions of Poles were forced into slave labor in Germany or sent to Soviet gulags in Siberia. In the fall of 1941, invading German authorities plastered Poland with warnings that Jews who fled ghettos would be executed – along with anyone who assisted them.
Before the invasion, Markowa was home to 4,500 people, including 120 Jews. During the fall of 1942, 55 Jews – almost half the villages Jewish population – were being hidden and supported by their neighbors. Despite the town’s mayor warning of an impending German December 13 raid, half of the village Jews were captured on a single day. Nonetheless, at least eight families in Markowa continued to hide Jewish fugitives.
Because their farm and home – a country cottage built by Jozef, with two rooms downstairs and an attic - were a few hundred meters distance from Markowa and the main road, the family accepted eight Jews – the Goldmans, the Grunfelds,and the Didners - into their home – hiding them in their attic. In a statement to all the churches of the country, the Polish Bishops’ Conference recently declared:
The life of the Venerable Servants of God Jozef and Wiktoria consisted of countless daily sacrifices and gestures of love. The fruit of adopting this way of life was the heroic decision to help Jews condemned to extermination. It was not a hasty decision but the result of reading the Word of God, which formed their hearts and minds and thus their attitude toward their neighbor. … Józef and Wiktoria decided to take in eight Jews, despite the threat of death from the Germans for those who helped hide Jews… For many months, they ensured them a roof and food, which, in wartime, is a real challenge.
Jozef also prepared a hiding place in the woods for four Jewish women to whom Wiktoria regularly brought food; they were chased down by German forces on December 13, 1942 and killed the next day.
At the beginning of 1942, approximately twenty Jewish families lived in Markowa; by mid-year the majority of them had been murdered in the German Belzec extermination camp or shot where they were found. In July, Germans and some of their Polish allies began searching forests and fields for others.
It is clear that the decision to harbor persecuted Jews was made together – by husband and wife and in consultation. The Church’s advocate for the canonization of the Ulmas, Father Witold Burda has written:
“As postulator, and by reading different testimonies and diverse material concerning their lives, I am convinced that both spouses, Jozef and Wiktoria, made this decision together. It was not Jozef alone.”
A witness for the Dicastery quoted Jozef: They are people, and I will not throw them out.”
Maria Elzbieta Szulikowska, author of Wiktoria Ulma: A Love Story recounts “the words of a great love that Wiktoria would repeat when talking about their children: ‘Children are like flowers. They need a lot of love, wisdom, attention, and proper care.’”
The execution of Markowa Jews began in the summer of 1942. Jews were taken from their homes, shot and buried in a former animal cemetery. Some managed to escape and, in November of that year, the local fire brigade was ordered to search for escapees and turn them over to the Germans.
That fall, members of the Szall family fled to Markowa from Lancut and were accepted by Wiktoria and Jozef, along with the sisters Golda and Layka Goldman. Stanislaw Niemczak, a neighbor of the Ulma family reported:
“These Jews stayed on the premises of the Ulmas and slept in the garret of the house… They never hid in particular, since all of them were busy helping to run the Ulmases’ farm.”
Eye witnesses have made it clear that the refugees welcomed by the Ulmas assumed active – out in the fresh air – roles in the day-to-day life of the small farm on the edges of a small village.
An inquiry conducted by Mateusz Szpytma for the Polish Institute for National Remembrance points the finger at Wlodzimierz Les, a “blue” police officer from Lancut, who knew the Szall family’s whereabouts, because he had helped them at an earlier stage in return for payment. He had been guarding the family’s possessions and it is believed that, when they wanted to retrieve them, he denounced them to the German authorities. (The “Blue Police” were subordinate to the occupying forces.) It is also possible that the large quantities of food Wiktoria procured to support so many guests attracted the attention of neighbors.
Documents preserved by the underground People’s Security Guard suggest that Les betrayed the Goldman hideout to his colleagues in the German gendarmerie.
The Ulmas has provided shelter for their Jewish refugee neighbors for a year and a half when five German gendarmes and between four and six local “blue police” arrived in Markow and raided the Ulma home during the night of March 22-23, 1942. They immediately murdered local cattle trader Saul Goldman and his four sons – Baruch, Mechel, Joachim and Moses, together with Lea Didner and her daughter and Genia (Goda) Grunfeld
Three Jews were shot as they slept in the attic; the others were shot in the back of their heads. Jozef and Wiktoria were killed point blank – an attempt by their executioners to further terrorize other villagers. Gendarme Jozef Kokott, 23, killed three of the children; other gendarmes murdered the others. Blue Police murderer Joseph Kokott is remembered to have said: “Look at how those Polish pigs are dying – those who were hiding Jews.”
Within minutes, seventeen men, women and children were murdered. Kokott told witnesses not to report how many people had been Killed: “Only you know this and you must not tell anyone.” Presumably, he did not want to explain the murder of children.
Initially, the victims were buried in two separate graves: one for the Jews, another for the members of the Ulma family.
In the days after the murder, Teofil Kielar, mayor of Markowa, asked the German commandeer Eilert Dieken why the children were killed. He responded, “So that you and your village have no problem with them.”
Four or five days later, villagers and relatives of Jozef and Wiktoria exhumed the family’s bodies and placed them in coffins for burial in the parish cemetery.
Franciszek Szylar testified:
“Placing the body of Wiktoria Ulma in the coffin, I found that she was pregnant. I base my statement on the fact that from her reproductive organs, the head and chest of a baby were visible.”
Wiktoria’s nephew testified, “They found the seventh child born in the grave, which my aunt had given birth to after her death.”
Following their deaths, two distinct and significant notations were found in the Ulma family bible:
The words “For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?” [Matthew 5:46 – The Sermon on the Mount] are underlined in red.
Next to The Parable of the Good Samaritan [Luke 10:29-37] appears the single word “Yes.”
The next time mask-wearing cowards march shouting “Jews will not replace us” or wave Nazi flags and symbols from a Florida turnpike overpass, remember the Venerable Servants of God Jozef and Wiktoria and their children.
Remember that, terrified as Nazi agents murdered the Jewish guests for whom she cared for a year and a half, Wiktoria went into labor and partially delivered her seventh child. Remember that child – only partially delivered – was murdered and dumped in an unmarked grave by men saluting the same Nazi flag.
The Nazis killed the Ulma baby even as it was being born. What will America’s neo-nazis do?