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A priest brings relics of the Polish Ulma family to the altar during the beatification mass for the family, including young children, killed by the Nazis in 1944 for providing refuge to Jews.
CNN –
The Catholic Church on Sunday beatified a Polish family of nine, including a newborn, who died at the hands of Nazi Germans during World War II for offering protection to a Jewish family from the Holocaust.
The beatification service for Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma and their seven children took place in the southeastern Polish town of Markowa, where they died at the hands of German military police in March 1944.
Cardinal Marcello Semeraro read a letter from Pope Francis during a mass attended by, among others, the Polish president and prime minister.
“We authorize that from now on the venerable servants of God, Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma, spouses and their seven children… (who) fearlessly sacrificed their lives for love of their brothers and welcomed into their home those who suffered persecution with the Awarded the title of Blessed,” wrote the Pope.
After the beatification was announced, a painting of the family was unveiled and a reliquary containing their remains was brought to the center of the stage.
Beatification is the last step before holiness in the Roman Catholic Church. Vatican media noted that this was the first time an entire family had been honored together in this way.
Speaking at the Vatican, Pope Francis described the Polish family as a “ray of light” in the darkness of World War II and said they should serve as an example for others to follow.
He elicited applause from the pilgrims who had gathered in St. Peter’s Square to hear his Angelus message.
Polish President Andrzej Duda thanked the Catholic Church for the beatification on behalf of the nation.
“Thank you for showing the historical truth about that time, about the fate of the Poles and Jews in this country under German occupation, who all wanted to survive and yet did not shy away from such ultimate acts of brotherhood and mercy,” he said.
Bartosz Siedlik/AFP/Getty Images
People stand at the family grave of the Ulma family, who Pope Francis called a “ray of light” in the darkness of World War II and said they should serve as an example to others.
About three million Jews living in prewar Poland were murdered during the Nazi German Holocaust, accounting for about half of all Jews killed in World War II.
Jews from across the continent were sent to be killed in extermination camps set up and run by Germans in occupied Poland – including Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor – home to Europe’s largest Jewish community at the time.
The Ulma family has been at the center of the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government’s efforts to highlight the courage of those thousands of Poles who tried to help Jews escape the Holocaust.
These policies have led Jewish organizations and some historians to downplay the role of those who collaborated with the Germans. PiS says commemorating this shame dishonors the country.
In the Markowa region, some historians say that witness accounts show that some residents looted Jewish homes, reported Jews to the Germans, or even killed them themselves.
Patryk Ogorzalek/Agencja Wyborcza.pl/Portal
The Pope initiated a round of applause for the family of pilgrims who had gathered in St. Peter’s Square to hear his Angelus message.
“The way we are discussing the history of this region is a missed opportunity. If we showed what some Poles did back then, we would show the heroism of the Ulmas in full,” said Dariusz Libionka, a historian at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
The Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) said the research by Libionka and fellow historian Jan Grabowski contained factual errors and denied that a museum in Markowa omitted or concealed information about Poland’s involvement in the deaths of Jews.
Thousands of Poles risked their lives during the war to protect Jewish neighbors. But research published since the fall of communism in 1989 showed that thousands also killed Jews or denounced those who hid them from Nazi occupiers, challenging the national narrative that Poland was just a victim.
“We have a duty to remember the righteous and have them as examples of who we want to be. And we have to think about the collaborators, because they are also role models for who we don’t want to be,” said Michael Schudrich, the chief rabbi of Poland.