Władysław Ulma

Władysław Ulma was a Polish Roman Catholic child of the interwar and wartime period, the third child and eldest son of Józef Ulma and Wiktoria Ulma (née Niemczak). He was born in 1936 in the village of Markowa, in the Łańcut countryside of the Second Polish Republic. His parents were practising Catholics and smallholders. Józef Ulma was a farmer who was also known locally as a self-taught reader, amateur photographer, beekeeper, silkworm breeder, and village librarian. Władysław grew up with older sisters Stanisława and Barbara and, as the 1930s and early 1940s passed, with younger brothers Franciszek and Antoni and a younger sister, Maria, in a modest rural household ordered by farm labour, parish life, and the parents’ piety. Surviving photographs taken by Józef show the children of the family in that setting; individual written records of Władysław’s character or schooling are otherwise scarce, as is typical for a village child of his age.

Under the German occupation of Poland during the Second World War, hiding Jews was a capital offence. In late 1942 the Ulmas took into their house eight Jewish people fleeing Nazi persecution, including members of the Szall family from nearby Łańcut and others connected with Markowa. They concealed them on the farm for about a year and a half. The children, Władysław among them, therefore lived in the same household as those in hiding while the family continued its ordinary agricultural work and religious practice. Władysław was still a small boy, about six or seven years old, during most of this period. The arrangement lasted until the spring of 1944.

On 24 March 1944 German gendarmes, acting on a denunciation, surrounded the Ulma farm at Markowa. They shot the Jewish people found there, then murdered Józef and Wiktoria. Wiktoria was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. The children were then killed as well, Władysław among them; he was seven years old. Contemporary accounts hold that the children were shot after their parents. The entire household, including the unborn child Wiktoria was carrying, died that morning. The victims were first buried near the site of the execution; their remains were later moved to the parish cemetery in Markowa, by the church of Saint Dorothy, where the family has since been commemorated.

After the war the Ulmas became one of the best-known Polish examples of rescue of Jews under German occupation. In 1995 Józef and Wiktoria were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. On 10 September 2023 the Catholic Church beatified Józef, Wiktoria, their six children, and the unborn child together as martyrs, in a ceremony held at Markowa with the authorization of Pope Francis. It was an unusual act of beatification in that it included a whole family and an unborn child. Władysław is therefore venerated as Blessed Władysław Ulma, a child martyr of the Second World War. Beyond the family setting, the hiding of the Jewish refugees, and the circumstances of the massacre, the surviving historical record does not preserve a separate, detailed biography of the boy himself.