Poland already boasts notable saints from the 20th century — Pope John Paul II, Faustina Kowalska, and Maximilian Kolbe, to name a few. Today, those great saints look on as the Ulma family is beatified in their hometown of Markowa, Poland. Martyred by Nazi soldiers for harboring Jewish families during the Holocaust, the Ulmas’ witness of love and fidelity makes them powerful intercessors for families and married couples today.
The Ulma Family: Martyred for Loving Their Neighbors
Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma met in their hometown of Markowa, a small farming village in southeast Poland. They were married in 1935 at the local Catholic Church and built a simple, unassuming life together. In their nine years of marriage before their martyrdom, Wiktoria gave birth to six children: Stanislawa, Barbara, Wladyslaw, Franciszek, Antoni, and Maria.
In the winter of 1942, the Ulma family offered refuge to three Jewish families — the Goldmans, the Grunfelds, and the Didners — in their attic despite Nazi decrees that assistance to Jews was punishable by death. The Ulmas managed to escape detection for several years, but they were eventually reported for aiding Jewish families. (RELATED: Poland’s Piles of Crutches)
On March 24, 1944, Nazi police came to the Ulma home and massacred the eight Jews in hiding before killing Jozef, Wiktoria, and their children, the oldest of whom was seven years old. The youngest of their children lived for only moments — Wiktoria was seven months pregnant at the time of her martyrdom, and her infant child was found beside her body. As she died, Wiktoria had gone into labor, delivering the son who joined his family as a martyr for the faith.
An Example of Love for Married Couples and Families
The Catholic Church has never beatified an entire family at once before, but the Ulma family’s beatification carries powerful significance in a culture permeated with attacks on faith, family, and marriage.
Jozef and Wiktoria, along with their children, are a “symbol of faithfulness to values that must never be betrayed, even under threat of death,” said Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, Substitute of the Vatican Secretariat of State. Though the Ulmas knew the risks of sheltering eight Jews amidst Nazi occupation, their commitment to the dignity of human life was truly heroic.
This heroic virtue is the fruit of deep love. The Polish Episcopate Conference writes of the Ulmas’ witness:
Józef and Wiktoria Ulma, together with their seven children, gave their lives to save Jewish families during World War II. They did it in the name of fidelity to Christ and in accordance with the commandment to love one’s neighbor. Their heroic death was the culmination of sacrificial love realized day after day, in the ordinary circumstances of married and family life.
In the school of marriage and family life, the Ulmas found the road to holiness. It is an ordinary path open to many, yet they trod it especially well. “The ordinariness of their marriage was based on real and concrete gestures through which God dwells,” the Episcopate Conference explains. “They live the promises made on the wedding day, fulfilling the covenant of faithful conjugal love every day.”
Jozef and Wiktoria understood marriage as it truly is: a relationship of self-gift, through which each spouse is called to lay down his or her life for the other. They lived their vows well and raised their children with sacrificial love. Pope Francis praised the family for showing that “holiness and heroic deeds are achieved through fidelity in everyday small things.”
The Ulmas are remembered for their heroic virtue in the mundane as much as they are for their heroic martyrdom. The couple remained faithful to Christ and receptive to new life in the face of brutal totalitarianism, raising their children to love the least among us. Their murder was a tragedy, but their memory is a blessing to Christians today striving to love spouses and children well in a society that seeks to tear the family apart.
Jozef, Wiktoria, and all your children – pray for us.
Mary Frances Myler is a writer from Traverse City, Michigan. You can follow her on Twitter @mfmyler.
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