The beatification of the entire Ulma family, including their children, is an absolutely unique event in the history of the Church, but at the same time sad and symbolic – Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki emphasized. On that day, the beatification of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma and their seven children took place in Markowa in Podkarpacie.
The Ulmas and their children were murdered by the Germans on March 24, 1944 for saving Jews.
“Something absolutely unique and sad at the same time”
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki referred to Sunday’s beatification during a live broadcast on Facebook that evening.
This is the first beatification – according to what I have heard – in the world, in the history of the Church, so something absolutely unique, and at the same time sad, symbolic and great. (…) Well, the entire Ulma family, including their children, was beatified
– emphasized the Prime Minister.
It concerns a family of Poles who hid Jews during World War II and were brutally murdered by the Germans in March 1944. German gendarmes. No Gestapo or SS men. Because sometimes an image is conjured up in the memory that there were bad Germans during World War II, but maybe there were also some normal Germans
– said the head of the government.
Well, I have a very brutal view on these matters. From my historical knowledge and the books I have read, it follows that the large, very large majority of the entire German society were supporters of Nazism, Adolf Hitler and that insane fascist ideology that the Germans then propagated and implemented.
– said Morawiecki. As he added: “They just put it into practice: killing innocent children, killing Poles who also saved Jews and of course killing the entire nation of Polish Jews.”
Unfortunately, they did it very effectively. There is no longer among us today, in the world, the Jewish language of that time – Yiddish, there is no culture, music, literature, there is no whole nation. The Germans murdered the entire country
– said the Prime Minister.
Let us remember this as a very great event, so sad and so sad that it is very difficult for me to imagine something similar, even though there have been such events in history. But also about all those Poles who helped Jews hide and survive during the Second World War
– Mateusz Morawiecki appealed.
Beatification of the Ulma family
The beatification of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma and their seven children took place on Sunday in Markowa in Podkarpacie. The service was presided over by the Pope’s envoy, Cardinal Prefect of the Dicastery for the Affairs of Saints. Marcello Semeraro.
Józef and Wiktoria Ulma and their seven children were murdered by the Germans on March 24, 1944 for saving Jews. 16 people were killed in the massacre. First, the Jews – two daughters of the Ulmas’ neighbors – the Goldmans: Golda (Genia) Gruenfeld and Lea Didner with their small child, and three Szall brothers, their 70-year-old father Saul Szall and another man from the Szall family . Subsequently, Józef and his wife Wiktoria, who was seven months pregnant, were shot in front of the Ulma children. In the end, the children were murdered: eight-year-old Stanisława, six-year-old Barbara, five-year-old Władysław, four-year-old Franciszek, three-year-old Antoni and one and a half-year-old. Mary.
The beatification process of the Ulma family lasted a total of twenty years.
In 1995, Wiktoria and Józef Ulma were posthumously honored by Israel’s Yad Vashem Institute with the title Righteous Among the Nations, and in 2010 by the President of the Republic of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, with the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. . Since 2018, at the request of the President of the Republic of Poland, Andrzej Duda, the National Day of Remembrance for Poles Who Saved Jews under German Occupation has been established by the Sejm and the Senate of the Republic of Poland.
Of the 51 countries in the world, Poles are the largest national group among the Righteous (7,232 people), despite the fact that in the General Government Policy (German-occupied territories) helping Jews was punishable by death.
READ ALSO:
— The Pope counted Józef and Wiktoria Ulma and their seven children among the blessed. In the Holy Mass approximately 37 thousand people took part faithfully. VIDEOS, PHOTOS
– OUR INTERVIEW. Szpytma on the beatification of the Ulma family: Great gratitude to God. The pain stayed with us. These tragedies live within us
— The Germans finally recorded the beatification of the Ulmas. However, they attacked the Church: the role of the Vatican during the Nazi era is controversial
olnk/PAP/Facebook
Source: wPolityce