Ulma, Józef and Wiktoria and their six children.

Józef Ulma, born 02-03-1900 in the village of Markowa and Wiktoria Ulma, born Niemczak on 10-12-1912 from the village also of Markowa near Łańcut . in Poland Wiktoria was nine months pregnant at the time of her death. At the beginning of the Second World War, Józef Ulma was a leading citizen in the village of Markowa: a librarian, a photographer, active in social life and the local Catholic Youth Association. He was a well-educated fruit grower and beekeeper. His wife Wiktoria was a housewife. The Ulmas had six children: Stanisława, 8 years old, Barbara, 7 years old, Władysław, 6 years old, Franciszek, 4 years old, Antoni, 3 years old and Maria, 2 years old. Another child would be born just days after the family’s summary execution. on 24-03-1944.

Through hard work, perseverance and determination, the Ulmas were able to purchase a larger farm (5 hectares in size) in Wojsławice near Sokal (now Ukraine), and had already started planning a move when the war started. At the time of her death, Wiktoria was about to give birth to their seventh child.

n the summer and fall of 1942, Nazi police deported several Jewish families from Markowa as part of Operation Reinhard, the Nazi plan to exterminate Polish Jews in the General Government District of German-occupied Poland, under Chief jurist of Nazi Germany and Governor-General of the ‘General Government’ territory of occupied Poland. Frank, Hans Michael “Hangman of Czech nation”.

 .Hans Michael Frank (Karlsruhe, 23-05-1900 – Nuremberg, 16-10-1946) was a German lawyer who worked for the NSDAP in the 1920s and 1930s. After Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933, Frank became chief lawyer of Nazi Germany and in 1939 Governor General of the Polish General Government. During his term of office (1939-1945) he imposed a reign of terror against the civilian population and was directly involved in the mass murder of Polish Jews. At the Nuremberg Trials he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and was executed by hanging in Nuremberg..His body and those of the other nine executed prisoners and the corpse of Hermann Goering were cremated at Ostfriedhof (Munich) and the ashes were scattered in the river Isar

On 02-04-1925, Frank married the 29-year-old secretary Brigitte Herbst (1895-1959). The wedding took place in Munich and the couple honeymooned in Venice. Hans and Brigitte Frank had five children:Sigrid Frank (born March 13, 1927, Munich)Norman Frank (born 03-06-1928, Munich) Brigitte Frank (born 13-01-1935 Munich) Michael Frank (born 15-02-1937, Munich) Niklas Frank (born 09-03-1939, Munich)  His son Niklas wrote a book about his father and the rough way he wrote about his father showed a lot of hatred.

Only those hidden in the houses of Polish peasants survived. Eight Jews found refuge with the Ulmas: six members of the Szall (Szali) family from Łańcut, including father, mother and four sons, as well as Chaim Goldman’s two daughters, Golda (Gienia) and Layka (Lea) Didner. Józef Ulma put all eight Jews in the attic.  They taught him to help him with part-time jobs while he was in hiding, to alleviate the costs incurred.

Death and burial ground of the Ulma family.

The Ulma family were denounced by Włodzimierz Leś, a member of the Blue Police, who had taken possession of the Szall (Szali) family’s real estate in Łańcut in spring 1944 and wanted to get rid of its rightful owners. In the early morning hours of 24-03-1944 a patrol of German police from Łańcut under Lieutenant Eilert Dieken  came to the Ulmas’ house which was on the outskirts of the village. The Germans surrounded the house and caught all eight Jews belonging to the Szali and Goldman families. They shot them in the back of the head according to eyewitness Edward Nawojski and others, who were ordered to watch the executions. Then the German gendarmes killed the pregnant Wiktoria and her husband so that the villagers would see what punishment awaited them for hiding Jews. The six children began to scream at the sight of their parents’ bodies. After consulting with his superior, 23-year-old Jan Kokott, a Czech Volksdeutscher from Sudetenland serving with the German police, shot three or four of the Polish children while the other Polish children were murdered by the remaining gendarmes. Within several minutes 17 people were killed. It is likely that during the mass execution Wiktoria went into labour because the witness to her exhumation testified that he saw a head of a newborn baby between her legs.

In Łańcut, Jan Kokot quickly showed his worst side. He became a real terror for the city and the surrounding area. A brutal torturer who volunteers for countless murders, assaults, extortions and other crimes. He was a classic criminal, corrupted by war, a sadist with countless human tragedies to his name, which unfortunately will never be fully known and deciphered. When he was brought before the Polish legal system years later, tragic memories were revived and the trial itself was met with great emotion and public interest. After the war he managed to hide in Czechoslovakia, where he was only found twelve years later.

The names of the other Nazi executioners are also known from their frequent presence in the village (Eilert Dieken,   Michael Dziewulski and Erich Wilde). The village Vogt Teofil Kielar was ordered to bury the victims with the help of other witnesses. From 01-01-1941, Eilert Dieken became the head of the German gendarmerie post in Łańcut, to which Markowa was subordinate. He asked the German commander, whom he had known from prior inspections and food acquisitions, why the children too had been killed. Dieken answered in German, “So that you would not have any problems with them.” The Germans then plunder the house, finding the remains of the Jewish inhabitants’ valuables and taking household appliances and food supplies.All this is loaded onto carts and taken to the police station in Łańcut. Meanwhile, the executioners organize a libation at the crime scene, in the Ulma house, forcing the village chief, Teofil Kielar, to supply them with vodka.

Kielar, born in Markowa, Podkarpackie, Poland on 10-02-1897 to Wojciech Kielar and Katarzyna Kluz. Teofil Kielar married Maria Cyran and had 3 children. He passed away age 79 in 1976. …

German war criminal Eilert Dieken, who ordered to kill the Ulma family along with the Jews they were hiding, was never held responsible for his brutal deeds. After the war, he returned to his home in Esens and continued to work in the police.

On 11-01-1945, in defiance of the Nazi prohibition, relatives of the Ulmas exhumed the bodies, which were originally buried in front of the house, and found Wiktoria’s seventh child, emerged from her womb, in the parents’ grave pit. A funeral was later held in the Church of Saint Dorothy in Markowa and the family’s remains were then buried in Markowa cemetery

Several weeks after the crime in Markowa, a ‘Blue’ policeman from the Łańcut police station, Włodzimierz Leś, was found guilty of denunciation by the Polish underground and shot dead on 10-09-1944 in accordance with a sentence of the Polish Underground State. Kokott was extradited to Poland from Czechoslovakia in 1957, sentenced to death in Rzeszów but later pardoned and his death sentence was eventually changed to 25 years imprisonment. He died in Polish prison of Racibórz in 1980, age 59.

Strikingly, despite the murder of the Ulmas – intended to strike fear into the hearts of the villagers – their neighbors continued to hide Jewish fugitives in Europe until the end of World War II. At least 21 Polish Jews survived in Markowa during Nazi Germany’s occupation of Poland. They are considered Righteous  Among the Nations by the State of Israel and were beatified in the Catholic Church by Pope Francis on  10-09-2023

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