Gedenkstätte Stille Helden

The farmer Józef Ulma lived in Markowa near Rzeszów (Poland) with his wife Wiktoria. They had six children. When German troops invaded Poland in 1939, Ulma took part in the country’s defense. In 1940 the German occupiers forced Polish Jews into ghettos, which were then dissolved in the summer of 1942. Ulma witnessed Jews being murdered on the spot or deported to Belzec extermination camp. He helped a Jewish family to build a hiding place in a neighboring forest.
In the fall of 1942, the Jewish Goldman family asked the Ulmas for a place to hide. They agreed to help, even though helping Jews carried a death sentence in Poland. For more than a year, eight Jews lived in the Ulmas’ attic.
However, the family were denounced. On March 24, 1944, German and Polish police officers arrived at the farm. The searched the house and found the people hiding there. Józef Ulma, his pregnant wife, their six children, and all the Jews living with them were shot dead.
In 1995 the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center posthumously honored Józef Ulma as Righteous Among the Nations. The entire Ulma family was beatified by the Catholic Church in 2023.