unborn child of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma

The unnamed unborn child of Józef Ulma and Wiktoria Ulma (née Niemczak) was the seventh child of a Roman Catholic couple from the village of Markowa, in the Subcarpathian region of German-occupied Poland. By the early 1940s the Ulmas already had six children—Stanisława, Barbara, Władysław, Franciszek, Antoni, and Maria—when Wiktoria conceived again during the Second World War. Józef was a farmer, photographer, fruit-grower, and beekeeper; the household was known locally as devoutly Catholic. From about December 1942 they hid eight Jewish people, members of the Szall family of Łańcut and the Goldman family, on their farm, despite German decrees that Poles who sheltered Jews would be executed together with their entire families.

On the morning of 24 March 1944 a detachment of German gendarmes from Łańcut, acting on a denunciation, surrounded the Ulma farm. They shot the eight Jews who had been in hiding, then murdered Józef and Wiktoria in front of their children, and then killed the six children. Wiktoria was in an advanced stage of pregnancy, generally described as the eighth or ninth month. Historical reconstructions agree that the seventh child died in the massacre; they do not agree on whether the infant remained in the womb or was delivered as the mother was dying. Some later local testimony held that Wiktoria went into labour when she was shot and that a newborn was found beside her body. Beatification materials refer to the child as unborn and unnamed. No baptismal name and no sex are recorded in the public historical record. The dead were first placed in a pit near the house and were later reburied in the parish cemetery at Markowa.

After the war the Ulmas became among the best-known Polish rescuers of Jews. Yad Vashem recognised Józef and Wiktoria as Righteous Among the Nations in 1995. A museum in Markowa dedicated to Poles who saved Jews during the occupation was named for the family and opened in 2016. In the Catholic Church a cause of beatification for the whole family, including the unborn child, proceeded on the grounds of martyrdom in odium fidei: they were judged to have been killed for an act of Christian charity. Pope Francis approved the decree. The beatification was celebrated on 10 September 2023 in Markowa; Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, presided as papal legate. The unnamed child was numbered among the blesseds with the parents and six siblings, an exceptional decision generally described as the first beatification of an unborn child in the history of the Catholic Church.

The liturgical memorial of Blessed Józef and Wiktoria Ulma and their seven children is kept on 7 July, the anniversary of the couple’s wedding in 1935. No separate feast has been assigned to the unborn child alone, and no official list of distinct patronages for that child has been promulgated. The child’s life is known only through the history of the parents and siblings: there is no independent documentation of a name, sex, or verified moment of birth, only death with the family at Markowa on 24 March 1944 and later ecclesiastical recognition of martyrdom. The parish cemetery and the shrine associated with the Ulmas at Markowa remain the principal places of memory.