In the framework of the 80th anniversary of the of the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz, Lorenzo Galligani (IT/ECR), in cooperation with Władysław Ortyl (PL/ECR), host an event dedicated to the commemoration of the Ulma family who bravely fought the Nazi regime in Poland by rescuing persecuted Jewish people. They were all exterminated by the Nazi. The panel discussion will be followed by the photo exhibition of the Ulma family, organised by the Podkarpackie region and currently showcased in the Polish embassy in Rome. Next to that, a projection of the documentary about the Ulma family will be shown to students of the local high-schools of Pistoia.
The exhibition will be open from January 22 to February 10, 2025 from 10:00 to 12:00 and from 15:00 to 17:30 (at the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Corte, Piazza del Duomo).
Background information
The beatification of the martyrs Józef and Wiktoria Ulma, aged 44 and 31, and their seven children (Stasia, aged 7, Basia, aged 6, Wladziu, aged 5, Franio, aged 3, Antos, aged 2, Marysia, aged 1 and a half, and an unnamed child who was born perhaps at the time of his mother's martyrdom) was an unprecedented event, because with an act of beatification an entire family was elevated to the glory of the altars. Another unprecedented fact is that this act also beatified the unborn child who was in the mother's womb at the time of her death. Although aware of the risk, after having helped other Jews who were persecuted only because they were Jews, the Ulmas dared to offer hospitality in the small attic of their home to eight Jews who were fleeing during the difficult times of the Second World War. Most likely they were betrayed and on the morning of March 24, 1944 the German police broke into their home and, after killing the Jews hosted there, they went over to the owners. The children of Józef and Wiktoria, who was in an advanced state of pregnancy, were also exterminated, after their parents.
The Holy Mass of beatification took place in the village of Markowa in the Podkarpackie Region, where the Ulma family lived, and were murdered and martyred by the Nazis. In his homily, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, recalled: «In 1942 Józef and Wiktoria Ulma opened the doors of their home and welcomed eight Jews, persecuted by the German Nazi regime (…). It was a “yes” to God’s will. Their home became that inn where the despised, rejected and mortally wounded man was hosted and cared for. He was thus able to continue living. Without caring care, in fact, man fails: care is so much a part of the human essence, that it makes existence possible precisely because it is human. For this gesture of welcome and care (in a word: charity) that arose from their sincere faith, the Ulma couple paid, together with the youngest members of their family, the supreme price of martyrdom: their lives were the precious coin, with which they sealed the gratuitousness of the total gift of themselves in love».
Thousands of people arrived in Markowa for the beatification ceremony, about 30 thousand people also from Germany, Ukraine, Belarus. But representatives of the Jewish community were also present, including the Chief Rabbi of Poland. All to celebrate and honor a family that "represented a ray of light in the darkness of the Second World War," as Pope Francis recalled at the end of the Angelus. May the Ulmas be "a model for all of us to imitate in the impetus of good, in the service of those in need," he added.