Sprawiedliwi B5.indd

Transcription

The Risk of Survival
“Whoever Saves a Life...”
volume 3
Institute of Nat io n a l R e m e m bra n c e
Commission of the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation
Mateusz Szpytma
The Risk of Survival
The Rescue of the Jews by the Poles
and the Tragic Consequences
for the Ulma Family
from Markowa
Warszawa – kraków 2009
Reviewed by Marcin Urynowicz
Editor Małgorzata Strasz
Translation by Aleksandra Rodzińska-Chojnowska
Proofreading Anna Piekarska
Typeset by Tomasz Ginter
Production manager Andrzej Broniak
Photographs in this book come from the collections of the Institute of National
Remembrance, the Jewish Historical Institute, the Archive of the Kraków
Congregation of the Ursuline Nuns, the Archive of the Congregation of the Sisters
of Saint Michael the Archangel in Miejsce Piastowe, Archdiocese of Przemyśl
of the Latin rite, the Orsetti House Museum in Jarosław, the Museum in Przeworsk
and private collections
Printed in Poland by
Toruńskie Zakłady Graficzne ZAPOLEX Sp. z o.o.
87-100 Toruń, ul. Gen. Sowińskiego 2/4,
A DVD version of the film “Cena życia” (“Price of Life”)
directed by Rev. Andrzej Baczyński, produced by TVP 3 Kraków
is attached to the book
Copyright © 2009 by Institute of National Remembrance
Commission of the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation
Series “Whoever Saves a Life...”: vol. 3
ISBN 978-83-7629-028-7
contents
Preface – Janusz Kurtyka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
The Subcarpathian Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Markowa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
The Fate of the Ulma Family and the Jews Concealed by Them . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Justice and Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Preface
The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission of the Prosecution of
Crimes against the Polish Nation (IPN) was established by the Sejm and the Senate of
the Republic of Poland. Its foremost task is the study of the recent history of Poland.
From the time of its establishment the Institute deals with, i.a. research into the
history of Polish-Jewish relations and the Holocaust. The IPN structures include also
a functioning prosecuting commission, which examines communist crimes carried
out against Polish citizens in the years 1939–1989, and conducts investigations
concerning Nazi crimes committed in the 1939–1945 period against Polish citizens,
including persons of various nationalities. A considerable part of these enquiries relates
to crimes against the Jewish population perpetrated by the German occupant, whose
policy resulted in the extermination of 90 per cent of the pre-war Jewish community in
Poland. The already completed and currently conducted investigations include those
in which the Poles appear as accomplices: the best known cases include the crime
committed in 1941 against the Jewish community in the small town of Jedwabne.
The outcome of the investigations and parallel academic studies made it possible to
establish a highly probable course of the criminal act, its instigators, perpetrators and
the number of victims. IPN also pursues other difficult topics, such as the pogrom
of the Jewish population in Kielce (1946). In this instance, the Institute carried out
a suitable enquiry, and its research department issued pertinent publications. IPN also
prepares an annual report for the Simon Wiesenthal Centre about the prosecution of
Nazi crimes.
As part of its studies on the Holocaust IPN has published a number of works,
including books, the most prominent being the collective works: Wokół Jedwabnego
(Concerning Jedwabne, ed. Paweł Machcewicz and Krzysztof Persak, Warszawa 2002),
Akcja Reinhardt. Zagłada Żydów w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie (Aktion Reinhardt.
The Mass Murder of Jews in the General Government, ed. Dariusz Libionka, Warszawa
2004), Polacy i Żydzi pod okupacją niemiecką 1939–1945. Studia i materiały (Poles
and Jews under the German Occupation 1939–1945. Studies and Materials, ed. Andrzej
Żbikowski, Warszawa 2006), and Zagłada Żydów na polskich terenach wcielonych do
Rzeszy (The Mass Murder of Jews on the Polish Territories Incorporated into Third
Reich, ed. Aleksandra Namysło, Warszawa 2008), the monograph study by Bogusław
Kopka: Konzentrationslager Warschau. Historia i następstwa (Konzentrationslager
Warschau. History and Consequences, Warszawa 2007) or the recently issued album
by Ryszard Kotarba: Obóz w Płaszowie 1942–1945 (Lager Płaszów 1942–1945,
Warszawa–Kraków 2009).
The investigations and academic research pursued by IPN are accompanied by
assorted educational initiatives, such as the popularisation of knowledge about the
Holocaust. The Institute organises cyclical workshops for teachers on lessons about
the Holocaust. It has also published three educational portfolios addressed to teachers
and students: Auschwitz. Pamięć dla przyszłości (Auschwitz. Remembrance for the
Future), Zagłada Żydów polskich w czasie II wojny światowej (The Mass Murder
of Polish Jews during the Second World War), and Polacy ratujący Żydów w latach
II wojny światowej (Poles Saving Jews during the Second World War). In April 2008,
upon the 65th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, IPN carried out a poster and
leaflet campaign in the largest Polish cities in order to bring the history of this heroic
uprising closer to the public.
In order to facilitate access to information about acts concerning assorted Jewish
questions, in December 2008 the IPN archival department initiated the publication of
a catalogue of documents entitled: Żydzi polscy i Żydzi w Polsce. Katalog materiałów
archiwalnych z zasobu IPN (Polish Jews and Jews in Poland. Catalogue of Archival
Materials from the IPN Collection), available on the Internet (www.ipn.gov.pl).
Extensive information was provided to the Yad Vashem Institute, with which contacts
and an academic-archival exchange have been intensified due to a cooperation
agreement signed in 2006. In cooperation with Yad Vashem, IPN conducts research into
the Polish Righteous among Nations and prepares inventories of all the sites in present-day Poland where the Jews died during the Second World War.
IPN undertakings encompass also studies on the range of the help rendered by
the Poles to the Jews at the time of the German occupation. In the last two years
the Institute issued several works on this topic, including Elżbieta Rączy’s: Pomoc
Polaków dla ludności żydowskiej na Rzeszowszczyźnie 1939–1945 (Aid from Poles
to Jews in Rzeszów Region 1939–1945, Rzeszów 2008) and Mateusz Szpytma’s:
Sprawiedliwi i ich świat. Markowa w fotografii Józefa Ulmy (The Righteous and
their World. Markowa in photographs of Józef Ulma, Warszawa–Kraków 2007), as
well as the above-mentioned educational portfolio: Polacy ratujący Żydów w latach
II wojny światowej. In 2006, together with the Institute for Strategic Studies and the
Head Office for State Archives and with the help of numerous other institutions, IPN
embarked upon a practical realisation of the “INDEX in memory of Poles murdered
or prosecuted by the Nazis because of their assistance to Jews” project. The Institute
together with the National Centre for Culture is also involved in the “Life for a Life”
educational programme. IPN independently conducts also the “Poles Saving the Jews”
research, whose objective is to determine the scope and scale of the aid provided in
occupied Polish lands. The presented book was written as a part of this programme.
Mateusz Szpytma proposed a synthetic and brief depiction of the situation in which
the Poles and the Jews found themselves in the wake of the German invasion. He
characterised the complicated Polish-Jewish relations during that period, focusing
on the help given by the Poles to their co-citizens of Jewish descent. The book also
describes the titular assistance from the national, regional and local points of view.
The author considered the efforts of the Polish Underground State made for the sake of
rescuing the Jews, especially the “Żegota” Council for Aid to Jews – the only European
conspiratorial government institution carrying out such a campaign.
The author devoted most of his attention to the Jews in the locality of Markowa,
where at least 25 Jews were hiding (17 survived the occupation) as well as to the
events of 24 March 1944, when 16 persons – Józef and Wiktoria Ulma, their six young
children, and eight members of the Szall and Goldman families – were shot. Despite
the fact that in 1995 the Yad Vashem Institute presented Józef and Wiktoria with
a posthumous medal of the Righteous among Nations, their history remained unknown
to the wider public. A beatification process inaugurated by the Catholic Church in
2003 and the initiatives of the local community, which on the sixtieth anniversary of
the crime founded a monument and organised national ceremonies, were the reason
why public opinion became interested in the Ulma family. The outcome also assumed
the form of numerous publications, mainly in the press, including foreign titles. The
presented book is the first to portray this heart-rending story against a wider backdrop,
transcending a local scale.
Professor Janusz Kurtyka
President of the Institute of National Remembrance
POLAND
The German invasion of Poland, commenced on 1 September 1939, marked the
outbreak of the most horrendous war in the history of mankind, whose tragic imprint
affected millions all over Europe and the world. The war exerted a particularly vivid
impact on two nations – Jewish and Polish. In accordance with the premises accepted
by the German authorities, the former people were to be totally annihilated. A similar
fate was to be later shared by a majority of the Poles, while those whom the Germans
intended to spare were to become the victors‘ slaves. The Second World War cost the
lives of about 6 million Polish citizens, including almost the entire Jewish community,
which before the war totalled three million.
In five weeks the Germans overran half of Poland. The rest of the territory was
occupied by the Soviet Union, which as Hitler’s ally invaded Poland on 17 September
1939. The Polish authorities decided to leave the country: from that time the President
and the government officiated in France, and after the latter country became occupied
by Germany in 1940 – in Great Britain. From the very onset of the occupation, the Poles
organised underground structures of the government in exile. They were, however,
incapable of effectively counteracting the two occupation authorities, which, contrary
to the principles of the civilised world, conducted a policy of terror unprecedented in
heretofore history. In terrains under German occupation terror was directed primarily
against the Poles and the Jews. Already during wartime operations, Wehrmacht
detachments killed thousands of civilians, the inhabitants of towns and villages, who
did not participate in the hostilities. The Germans destroyed property and cultural
goods, set fire to houses, and demonstrated particular aggression towards the Jews
(burning down numerous synagogues). To the end of 1939, more than 40 000 persons
were murdered on Polish territories directly incorporated into the Third Reich. During
the whole period of German rule, and specially its initial stage, over 900 000 people,
including tens of thousands of Jews, were deported from this region. The repressions
were just as extensive in the General Government (GG), created by Hitler in occupied
central Poland and administered by the Germans, headed by Hans Frank.
Polacy i Żydzi pod okupacją niemiecką 1939–1945. Studia i materiały, ed. A. Żbikowski, Warszawa 2006.
Here also an extensive bibliography concerning the extermination of the Jews and Polish-Jewish relations.
It must be stressed that out of a total of 100 000 Polish citizens of Jewish descent (10 %) serving in the Polish
army, some 7 000 soldiers and a hundred officers died (D. Libionka, ZWZ-AK i Delegatura Rządu RP wobec
eksterminacji Żydów polskich [in:] Polacy i Żydzi..., p. 18). Polish soldiers of Jewish descent were killed not only
by the Germans but also by the Soviet authorities, e.g. in Katyn.
The author focused on the German occupation since throughout the whole wartime period the territory described
by him remained under German rule.
C. Brzoza, Polska w czasach niepodległości i II wojny światowej (1918–1945), Kraków 2001 (“Wielka historia
Polski”, vol. 9), p. 284.
12
Poland
The German authorities inaugurated their activity with repressions aimed against
the intelligentsia. In November 1939, 183 professors of assorted Kraków academies
were arrested and imprisoned in KL Sachsenhausen. In May and June 1940 about
3 500 persons were shot and more than 10 000 sent to concentration camps (including
KL Auschwitz, which in its initial stage was intended predominantly for the Poles) as
part of the so-called AB-Aktion, whose purpose was to eliminate the “leaders”.
On 28 September 1939 Germany and the USSR signed in Moscow a friendship
and frontier convention, a continuation of the secret Ribbentrop-Molotov pact of
23 August 1939, planning to put an end to the Polish state. The agreement pertained,
i.a. to the German-Soviet frontier, which was to run across vanquished Poland. Joint
army parades held in captured Polish cities were in all likelihood accompanied by
ascertainments concerning the annihilation of the Polish elites. At the same time,
while the Germans were engaged in pursuing AB-Aktion, the Soviet authorities killed
22 000 Poles in Katyn, Kharkov and Tver, the majority being representatives of the
intelligentsia mobilised in 1939: medical doctors, lawyers, teachers, and professional
officers belonging to the different nationalities living in the Poland before the war.
The Soviet occupants deported to Siberia at least 380 000 persons, including 210 000
Poles and 70 000 Jews from the former eastern territories of the Republic of Poland,
and arrested over 110 000 persons for political reasons.
In June 1941 the Hitler-Stalin alliance ended after the German invasion of the USSR,
and all Polish territories found themselves under the rule of the Third Reich. Terror,
especially applied towards the Jews, grew even more intense. The Germans arrested,
shot and sent their victims to concentration camps as punishment for the slightest
infringement of the occupation regulations. The growing strength of the Underground
resulted in mass-scale German reprisal for supporting the armed partisan movement.
The occupants carried out a pacification of the countryside by setting fire to homes
and killing the rural population. They also decided to evict all Poles from the region of
Zamość, which was to be turned into a German colony. Faced with enormous resistance,
they managed to deport 51 000 Poles from 117 villages (although the original plans
foresaw a much larger number), replaced by about 10 000 German settlers. The Poles
(a total of more than 2,5 million) were successively consigned to carry out compulsory
labour in Germany. It is estimated that in 1939–1945 the occupants killed about
3 million ethnic Poles and almost the entire 3 million-strong Jewish community. Only
300 000 Jews survived – in the USSR, assorted concentration camps, and by finding
refuge in forests or Polish homes.
The Germans began introducing anti-Jews laws already during the first months of
the administration of the occupied Polish territories. On 23 November 1939 the General
Government compelled all Jews older than ten years of age to wear armbands with the
Star of David. Subsequently, they were assigned to forced labour and banned from
On this topic, i.a. Zagłada polskich elit. Akcja AB – Katyń, Warszawa 2006.
C. Brzoza, Polska w czasach niepodległości i II wojny światowej..., p. 297; Wysiedlenia, wypędzenia i ucieczki
1939–1959. Atlas ziem Polski, Warszawa 2008, p. 37.
C. Brzoza, Polska w czasach niepodległości i II wojny światowej..., p. 331.
According to approximate data in 1938 Poland was inhabited by almost 35 million population, including about
23 million Poles and almost 3,5 million Jews; about 85–89 % of the Jewish population perished (C. Madajczyk,
Polityka III Rzeszy w okupowanej Polsce, Warszawa 1970; L. Olejnik, Polityka narodowościowa Polski w latach
1944–1960, Łódź 2003).
Poland
13
using public means of transport and leaving their place of residence without a permit.
Property, enterprises, shops and workshops were confiscated. Soon, a large part of
the Jewish population was sent to labour camps, which in 1941 already numbered
about 200. The remaining part of the Jewish population was driven into ghettoes;
more than 400 ghettoes were created on occupied Polish soil. In 1941 the leaders
of the Third Reich resolved to implement a “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”,
which denoted the murder of all European Jews, including those who lived in Poland
under German occupation. The outcome of this decision was the death of about 5,5–
–5,8 million European Jews – in extermination camps, executed, and killed by forced
labour, starvation and illnesses caused by the conditions created by the occupant.
In response to the policies of the aggressors, the government of the Republic of
Poland in exile and the authorities of the Underground State in Poland embarked upon
efforts at saving their citizens, including those of Jewish descent10. In 1940 General
Władysław Sikorski, the Polish prime minister and commander-in-chief, declared in
an official statement: “The harassment applied by the Germans in relation to the Jewish
population is just as cruel as it is demeaning”11. Upon numerous occasions the Polish
authorities in exile protested against the murder of the Jews in occupied Poland12. In
February 1942 the conspiracy Polish Army, active in the occupied territories as the
Union of Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej – ZWZ) and subsequently as the
Home Army (Armia Krajowa – AK), established a Jewish department to analyse the
situation of the Jews and inform the Polish government and through its intermediary
– the international public opinion. In November 1942 Jan Karski provided the
supreme Polish, British and American authorities with data about the mass-scale
murders of the Jewish population, On 30 November 1942 “Dziennik Polski”
published a resolution passed by the National Council, which declared that: “The
Government of the Republic of Poland has informed Allied governments and public
opinion about the latest news concerning the mass murders of the Jewish population
in Poland, committed and systematically being perpetrated by the German occupants.
The number of the Jews murdered by the Germans in Poland since September 1939
is more than a million”13. Consequently, on 17 December 1942 a Declaration of the
twelve Allied States about the responsibility for the extermination of the Jews was
signed upon the initiative of the Poland, stating: “From all the occupied countries
Jews are being transported, in conditions of appalling horror and brutality, to Eastern
Europe. […] None of those taken away are ever heard of again. […] Such events
can only strengthen the resolve of all freedom-loving peoples to overthrow the
barbarous Hitlerite tyranny. They re-affirm their solemn resolution to ensure that
those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution, and to press on with
the necessary practical measures to this end”14. Unfortunately, the governments never
A. Żbikowski, Wstęp [in:] Polacy i Żydzi..., pp. 7–14.
On the activity of the Polish government concerning the Jewish minority see, i.a.: D. Engel, Fading a Holocaust.
The Polish Government-in-exile and the News, 1943–1945, Chanel Hill – London 1993; Polacy – Żydzi 1939–
–1945. Wybór źródeł. Polen – Juden – Poles – Jews, prep. by A. K. Kunert, introduction by W. Bartoszewski,
Warszawa 2006; S. Korboński, The Jews and Poles in World War II, New York 1989.
11
Polacy – Żydzi 1939–1945..., p. 37.
12
Ibidem, pp. 70–81.
13
Ibidem, p. 79.
14
Ibidem, p. 111.
10
14
Poland
initiated any steps, such as bombing the rail lines leading to the death camps, which
could have reduced the number of the victims.
Despite the threats of repressions and the death penalty, some Poles, including
pre-war anti-Semites, came to the aid of the Jews, regardless of the decisions made by
the authorities15.
The help provided by the Poles can be divided into three categories, the first being
activity initiated prior to the establishment of the Council for Aid to Jews (Rada
Pomocy Żydom, December 1942). The second category was the organised campaign
conducted by the Council, and the third – the individual efforts of particular persons
and their families16.
Already from the onset of the occupation, organised assistance for the Jewish
population involved numerous environments. As a rule, these were typical grass roots
initiatives, pursued chiefly in those localities where the Poles and the Jews cooperated
before the war. Once the Germans commenced the compulsory deportation of the Jews
to the ghettoes, some of the conspiracy groups, such as the Polish Socialist Party (Polska
Partia Socjalistyczna) or the Peasant Party (Stronnictwo Ludowe), as well as Catholic
monastic orders offered aid to those Jews who remained on the “Aryan” side17. Help
was provided in establishing useful contacts or obtaining forged documents18. By way
of example, the employees of the Social Welfare Department in the Municipal Board
of Warsaw played the role of intermediaries in, i.a. finding places for Jewish children
in Polish orphanages19.
Home Army soldiers active in the Jewish section together with members of the Polish
Democratic Organisation (Polska Organizacja Demokratyczna) and representatives
of national-Catholic groups gathered around the celebrated writer Zofia Kossak-Szczucka (associated with the Front for the Rebirth of Poland – Front Odrodzenia
Polski) perceived the necessity of institutionalising the help campaign, since
scattered initiatives had an extremely limited potential. The whole issue was becoming
increasingly urgent in view of the fact that the German plan for a total annihilation of
the Jews was being implemented systematically and with growing brutality. This was
the period of a dispersal of the largest concentration of the Jews in occupied Poland
– the Warsaw ghetto. Created in the autumn of 1940, during its peak period the ghetto
contained about 450 000 residents. When on 22 July 1942 the Germans commenced
the great deportation of hundreds of thousands to the death camp in Treblinka, the
number of Jews escaping to the “Aryan” part of the town (outside the ghetto walls)
J. Żaryn, Elity obozu narodowego wobec zagłady Żydów [in:] Polacy i Żydzi..., pp. 365–428.
M. Urynowicz, Zorganizowana i indywidualna pomoc Polaków dla ludności żydowskiej eksterminowanej przez
okupanta niemieckiego w okresie drugiej wojny światowej [in:] Polacy i Żydzi..., p. 217; Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej.
Polacy z pomocą Żydom 1939–1945, prep. by W. Bartoszewski, Z. Lewinówna, Warszawa 2007; The Encyclopedia
of the Righteous Among the Nations. Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust – Poland, vol. 1–2, Jerusalem 2004.
17
T. Prekerowa, Konspiracyjna Rada Pomocy Żydom w Warszawie 1942–1945, Warszawa 1982; E. Kurek-Lesik,
Gdy klasztor znaczył życie. Udział żeńskich zgromadzeń zakonnych w akcji ratowania dzieci żydowskich w Polsce
w latach 1939–1945, Kraków 1992.
18
“Żegota”. Rada Pomocy Żydom 1942–1945. Wybór dokumentów poprzedzony wywiadem A. Friszke z W.
Bartoszewskim, prep. by A. K. Kunert, Warszawa 2002, p. 18.
19
Ibidem, p. 24; Matka dzieci Holocaustu. Historia Ireny Sendlerowej, prep. by A. Mieszkowska, Warszawa
2004, p. 161; B. Engelking, J. Leociak, Getto warszawskie. Przewodnik po nieistniejącym mieście, Warszawa
2001, p. 249, 321.
15
16
Poland
15
grew significantly. At the same time, the practice of blackmailing the Jewish fugitives
and the Poles who offered them shelter was also on the rise20. This trend met with
the protest of, i.a. the Front for the Rebirth of Poland, which in August 1942 issued
a dramatic declaration: “The world looks on at these atrocities, more horrible than
anything history has seen, and is silent. The slaughter of millions of people continues
in ominous silence. The executioners are silent; they do not boast about their deeds.
England is silent, so is America; even international Jewry is silent, usually so sensitive
to any harm done to their people. Silent are the Poles. The Polish political allies of
the Jews limit themselves to journalistic notes; the Polish opponents of Jews show no
interest in a matter that is foreign to them. Dying Jews are surrounded only by Pilates
washing their hands. Silence should not be tolerated any more. If for no other reason
– it is contemptible. Who is silent in the face of murder – becomes a partner of the
murderer. Who does not condemn – approves”21.
Soon, the authors of the appeal and their adherents proposed the establishment of
a committee coordinating the campaign of saving Jewish lives, which involved the
conspiracy Delegature of the Government of the Republic of Poland, a representation
of the government-in-exile. The Provisional Committee for Aid to Jews (Tymczasowy
Komitet Pomocy Żydom, which for conspiracy reasons became known as the Konrad
Żegota Committee) was established on 27 September 194222. In two months, the
Committee was capable of coming to the assistance of about 180 persons23. Upon
the basis of these experiences it was decided to create a Council for Aid to Jews
(4 December 1942). In contrast to the Konrad Żegota Committee, the Council was
not merely a contact point, but by distributing the funds of several independent socio-political organisations it became a conspiracy government institution, with its own
inner structures, including local units. The Council guaranteed relatively steady support
thanks to means obtained from the Polish Government in London and funds raised
by the Jewish community abroad, especially in the USA. For all practical purposes,
the Council comprised a “consultative committee” of assorted parties. Already in
December 1942 an Executive Office was created for the purpose of rendering the
Council’s activity more efficient, and in subsequent months it set up units dealing with
particular forms of aid24, i.a. accommodation, local, children’s, and medical services
departments.
Besides financial support the co-workers of the Council helped the escaped Jews
to cross frontiers and flee from occupied Poland. Jews in hiding were provided with
illegal documents (about 40 000 up to 1 August 1944). Such activity was carried out
according to the capacities of the Underground structures, and entailed a constant threat
to the lives of all the participants. Numerous sources indicate that notwithstanding
its persistent attempts, the Council was incapable of extending help to all the needy:
“Despite the fact that together with the provinces, the Council’s campaign encompasses
about 3 500 persons, and according to its declaration the Coordination Committee
M. Urynowicz, Stosunki polsko-żydowskie w Warszawie w okresie okupacji hitlerowskiej [in:] Polacy i Żydzi...,
p. 567.
21
Polacy – Żydzi 1939–1945..., Warszawa 2006, p. 213.
22
M. Urynowicz, Zorganizowana i indywidualna pomoc..., pp. 217–218.
23
Ibidem, p. 219.
24
20
16
Poland
deals with at least the same number, more than a thousand persons still await aid”25.
Nonetheless, the Council was able to help thousands of Polish Jews. By way example,
Irena Sendlerowa, head of the children’s department, and her co-workers saved the
lives of about 2 500 Jewish children26.
***
Polish families and persons extended aid to more Jews than the institutions of the
Polish Underground State. It is estimated that individual assistance made it possible
to save the lives of 30 000 – 100 000 Polish Jews27. Such stands deserve even greater
recognition since in occupied Poland every form of succour carried the threat of
capital punishment, meted not only to those who directly helped the Jews, but also to
their families and, frequently, neighbours. General Governor Hans Frank issued the
first pertinent decree on 15 October 1941: “Jews who leave their designated quarter
without permits face the death penalty. The same punishment is imposed towards those
persons who provide refuge for such Jews. Inciters and accomplices are to be punished
the same as the perpetrators, and an attempted crime will be penalised identically as
a committed crime. In less serious cases verdicts might involve heavy imprisonment
or incarceration”28. A resolution issued a year later expanded the restrictions: “Police
security measures will be employed in the case of persons who obtain information
that a Jew is illegally staying outside the residential quarter and do not inform the
police”29. Colourful posters displayed in cities and villages recalled the resolution and
contained even more rigorous regulations: “Help rendered to the Jews includes not
only providing them with accommodation for the night and food, but also transporting
them by any means of locomotion, purchasing commodities from them, etc.”30.
According to the historian Szymon Datner, a Holocaust survivor, the resolutions
issued by Hans Frank in October 1941 were announced at a time when the Germans
were preparing a systematic extermination of the Jews. Datner emphasised that: “This
extremely rapid course of the annihilation of the Polish Jews to a large extent explains
the small number of Jews rescued. The awareness of the fact that ‘deportation’ does
not signify ‘going to work in the East’ – as the Germans officially announced to lull the
vigilance of the victims – slowly penetrated the minds of the residents of the ghettoes
together with rumours, impossible to verify and heard with disbelief, that the Jews
were transported to sites of mass-scale extermination. This fact complicated and almost
hampered the campaign of saving lives undertaken by the Jews themselves as well as
Ibidem, p. 286 (Letter of the Council for Aid to Jews to the government delegate concerning the restriction of
funds and the simultaneous rise of the number of the needy, Warsaw, 7 February 1944).
26
Matka dzieci Holocaustu..., pp. 151–264.
27
A lower estimate (30 000–35 000) is given by Israel Gutman in an introduction to: The Encyclopedia of the
Righteous Among the Nations. Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust – Poland, vol. 1..., p. XX, and a higher one
– by, i.a. S. Datner, Las Sprawiedliwych. Karta z dziejów ratownictwa Żydów w okupowanej Polsce, Warszawa
1968, p. 86.
28
Dritte Verordnung über Aufenthaltsbeschränkungen im Generalgouvernement, “Verordungsblatt fűr das
Generalgouvernement” 1941, no. 99, Kraków, 25 October 1941.
29
Polizeiverordnung über die Bildung von Judenwohnbezirken in den Distrikt Radom, Krakau und Galizien,
“Verordungsblatt für das Generalgouvernement” 1942, no. 98, Kraków, 14 November 1942.
30
W. Bielawski, Zbrodnie na Polakach dokonane przez hitlerowców za pomoc udzielaną Żydom, Warszawa 1987,
p. 115 (Announcement of the SS and police commander for the Warsaw District, Warsaw, 5 September 1942).
25
Poland
17
the rescue operations conducted outside the ghettoes”31. Datner depicted the difficult
situation of people seeking help and those to whom the requests for aid were addressed:
“When a strange Jew knocked at the window of a peasant cottage in the middle of
the night, he was accompanied by the Jewish question of those years, a whole tangle
of implications, risks and threats, the necessity of making a decision and associated
spiritual dilemma. The baited asks for help, a spoonful of food, several moments inside
to warm himself. When he sees a glimmer of kindness in the eyes, or hears a gentle
word he asks to be permitted to stay for a few days – to work and then leave. The
peasant faces a question – how should he react? He is well aware of the fact that in
front of his window there stands the moral problem of a man whose very humanity
has been negated, a great humanitarian issue. A question, which has been faced by
thousands of generations: that of the temporary supremacy of evil, of the pursued and
the repressed. In such a situation one is forced to verify oneself, to confront one’s stand
with a moral command. The risk connected with the choice of good – the pursued – has
always been great. During the 1939–1945 period the dimension of this hazard was
incomparably great. Generally speaking, there seemed to exist four possible resolutions
of the dilemma: the first was to turn over the Jew in accordance with the ‘law’ imposed
by the occupant, which was tantamount to a death sentence for the victim; the second
– to refuse not only to denounce but also to help, the third – to render immediate
assistance, and the fourth – to provide care and refuge for a longer stretch of time”32.
We still lack the outcome of research that would unambiguously determine the number
of persons to whom the Poles offered immediate or long-term help33.
No detailed studies have been carried out to establish how many Poles adapted
themselves to the inhuman “laws” introduced by the occupant and were responsible
for the deaths of those persons whom they had denounced. Others enjoyed financial
gain from blackmailing persons who provided shelter for the Jews. The Underground
authorities attempted to prevent such heinous deeds. On 16 September 1942 the
Directorate of Civil Resistance (Kierownictwo Walki Cywilnej – KWC) issued
a statement subsequently published in the Underground press: “Unable to counteract
these crimes, the Directorate of Civil Resistance protests in the name of the entire
Polish nation against the atrocities perpetrated on the Jews. All Polish political
and civic groups join in this protest. As in the case of Polish victims of German
persecution, the executioners and their henchmen will be held directly responsible
for these crimes”34. Half a year later, the KWC formulated a more concrete warning:
“The Polish people, themselves the victims of a horrible reign of terror, are witnessing
with horror and compassion the slaughter of the remnants of the Jewish population in
Poland. Their protest against this crime has reached the ear of the free world. Their
effective assistance to Jews escaping from ghettoes or extermination camps prompted
the German occupiers to publish a decree, threatening with death all Poles who
S. Datner, Las Sprawiedliwych..., p.19.
Ibidem, p. 27.
33
Pertinent research was initiated in 2006 by the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) by realising the
extensive “Poles Saving the Jews” programme. Together with the Institute of Strategic Studies and the Head
Office of State Archives of Poland, IPN also conducts the “INDEX in memory of Poles murdered or prosecuted
by the Nazis because of their assistance to Jews”.
34
Polacy – Żydzi 1939–1945..., p. 217.
31
32
18
Poland
render help to Jews in hiding. Nevertheless, some individuals, devoid of honour and
conscience and recruited from the criminal world, have now discovered a new, impious
source of profit in blackmailing the Poles who shelter Jews, and the Jews themselves.
The Directorate of Civil Resistance warns that every instance of such blackmail will
be recorded and prosecuted with all the severity of the law – right away, whenever
possible, but, in any event, in the future”35.
Despite such warnings the above-described incidents did take place36, as evidenced
by the death sentences passed by the Underground for so-called szmalcownictwo (Jew-hunting and extortion)37. In the case of blackmail the verdicts were few, but they acted
as a deterrent, especially since they were announced publicly. The first sentences were
passed and carried out in Warsaw and Kraków in July and August 194338. There also
took place mass-scale murders committed by Poles incited by the Germans, e.g. in the
summer of 1941 in Jedwabne and environs39.
Apparently, the heretofore known instances of crimes unworthy of the Poles, and
perpetrated against the Jews, were not a universal phenomenon40. On the other hand,
numerous examples of support have been recorded. Szymon Datner informs: “Thanks
to the self-sacrificing help rendered by Polish society, its best sons and daughters,
about 100 000 Jews were rescued in the gravest possible conditions and circumstances.
[...] A great number of Poles – men and women, the young, the elderly and children
– perished. [...] Upon certain occasions the executioners ordered that the Poles and the
Jews be buried in a single grave. This tragic shared plight possesses a great emotional,
moral, historical and political message”41. Initial estimates indicate that the German
occupant killed or sentenced to concentration camps about 2 500 persons for assisting
the Jews, but we still do not know the names of even a half of the rescuers42.
According to studies conducted by Datner, 80 % of the persons killed for assisting
the Jews were villagers. The largest number was recorded in the voivodeship Kraków
and the present-day Subcarpathian voivodeship43.
Ibidem, p. 220.
This topic was discussed by: J. Grabowski, Ja tego Żyda znam. Szantażowanie Żydów w Warszawie
1939–1943, Warszawa 2004; B. Engelking-Boni, “Szanowny panie gistapo”. Donosy do władz niemieckich
w Warszawie i okolicach w latach 1940–1941, Warszawa 2003; A. Żbikowski, Antysemityzm, szmalcownictwo,
współpraca z Niemcami a stosunki polsko-żydowskie pod okupacją niemiecką [in:] Polacy i Żydzi..., pp. 429–505;
G.S. Paulsson, Utajone miasto. Żydzi po aryjskiej stronie Warszawy (1940–1945), Kraków 2007, p. 217 (this
book was originally published in English: G.S. Paulsson, Secret City. The Hidden Jews of Warsaw 1940–1945,
New Haven – London 2002; the author used the Polish edition).
37
D. Libionka, ZWZ-AK i Delegatura Rządu RP wobec eksterminacji Żydów polskich [in:] Polacy i Żydzi...,
pp. 121–125.
38
39
The most extensive study on this subject is: Wokół Jedwabnego, vol. 1: Studia, vol. 2: Dokumenty, ed.
P. Machcewicz, K. Persak, Warszawa 2002.
40
A different view is represented by Andrzej Żbikowski, who wrote about the “frequent” instances of the
Poles’ anti-Jewish stands and activity at the time of the German occupation (A. Żbikowski, Antysemityzm,
szmalcownictwo, współpraca z Niemcami..., pp. 429–505).
41
S. Datner, Las Sprawiedliwych..., p. 86. The complicated situation of those days is portrayed also in: M. Melchior,
Polscy Żydzi ocaleni na “aryjskich papierach”. Analiza doświadczenia biograficznego, Warszawa 2004.
42
W. Bielawski, Those Who Helped. Polish Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, Warszawa 1987;
W. Zajączkowski, Martyrs of Charity, Washington 1988. Detailed studies are conducted as part of the INDEX
programme.
43
S. Datner, Las Sprawiedliwych..., p. 116. Such a large percentage of victims in the villages stems from the fact
that this was where the greatest number of Jews went into hiding (helped by the peasants and the landowners).
35
36
50
250
19
Poland
The largest Jewish communities Poland on the eve of the war
(based on: Martin Gilbert, Atlas historii Holocaustu, Kryspinów [no date], p. 35)
50 km
0
50
100
150
200
250
Wilno
Grodno
Białystok
Warszawa
Kalisz
Łódź
Siedlce
Międzyrzec
Podlaski
Radom
Lublin
Częstochowa
Pińsk
Brześć
Litewski
Kowel
Chełm
Kielce
Łuck
Będzin
Równe
Rzeszów
Sosnowiec
Kraków
Tarnów
Markowa
Przemyśl
Lwów
Tarnopol
Drohobycz
Stanisławów
frontier of Poland in 1938
boundary of Polish lands incorporated into the Reich
boundary of the General Government after 22 June 1941
terrains of Poland occupied by the USSR in 1939–1941
terrains included into the General Government after 22 June 1941
area of the Polish state after 1945
50 km
0
50
100
150
200
250
Kołomyja
Map of Poland in 1938 featuring occupation borders from the end of 1939 and the locality of Markowa, where in 1938 the Jewish
population (120 persons) comprised not quite 3 % of the inhabitants.
Select statistical data concerning various towns – the name of a given city is followed by the size of the Jewish population, its
percentage in 1939 and the century in which a Jewish community (kahal) originated: Będzin – 21 625, 45 %, seventeenth century;
Białystok – 39 165, 45 %, eighteenth century; Brześć Litewski – 21 440, 52 %, fourteenth century; Chełm – 13 537, 47 %, fifteenth
century; Częstochowa – 28 486, 30 %, eighteenth century; Drohobycz – 17 000, 44 %, fifteenth century; Grodno – 21 159, 42 %,
fourteenth century; Kalisz – 16 220, 35 %, twelfth century; Kielce – 18 083, 40 %, sixteenth century; Kołomyja – 15 000, 33 %,
sixteenth century; Kowel – 12 785, 61 %, sixteenth century; Kraków – 56 515, 26 %, fourteenth century; Lublin – 38 937, 35 %,
fourteenth century; Lwów – 99 595, 33 %, fourteenth century; Łuck – 17 366, 48 %, tenth century; Międzyrzec Podlaski – 12 000,
75 %, seventeenth century; Pińsk – 20 220, 75 %, sixteenth century; Przemyśl – 17 326, 34 %, fourteenth century; Radom – 25 159,
23 %, seventeenth century; Równe – 22 737, 71 %, sixteenth century; Rzeszów – 14 000, 36 %, fifteenth century; Siedlce – 14 685,
48 %, sixteenth century; Sosnowiec – 20 805, 22 %, nineteenth century; Stanisławów – 24 823, 41 %, seventeenth century; Tarnopol
– 14 000, 44 %, sixteenth century; Tarnów – 19 330, 36 %, fifteenth century; Warszawa (Warsaw) – 352 659, 29 %, fifteenth century;
Wilno – 55 006, 28 %, fifteenth century.
20
Poland
German-Soviet military parade in Brześć on the Bug, 22 September 1939
First
announcements
of the German
occupation
authorities
in 1939
Poland
Deportation of the Poles from Włocławek
Liquidation of the ghetto in Kraków and the transference of the Jews to a labour camp
in Płaszów in 1943
21
22
Poland
Gate leading to the German concentration camp Auschwitz I. From 1940 this was the site
of the imprisonment and murder of the Jews, the Poles and the representatives of other
nationalities (photograph from May 1945)
Forced labour – the Jews clearing the streets of Kraków of snow, winter 1940–1941
Poland
Execution of Jewish women in Międzyrzecz (Volhynia)
Accused Polish citizen tried by a German summary court
23
24
Poland
Representatives of the Polish intelligentsia led to an execution site in Palmiry near Warsaw
as part of the so-called AB-Aktion, 1940
Execution of the Poles in Bochnia in retaliation for an attack against a German police station,
1939
Poland
Jewish cemetery in Biłgoraj after a mass execution of the Jews, 1942
Jews leaving a bunker during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1943
25
26
Warsaw, 5 September 1942. An announcement reminding about the death penalty for
aiding the Jews at the time of the so-called Great Action in the Warsaw Ghetto, when
about 400 000 Jews were deported to die in the gas chambers of the death camp in
Treblinka (translation p. 16)
Poland
Poland
Warsaw, 17 December 1943. A German announcement informing about the execution
of ten persons for, i.a. hiding the Jews
27
28
Poland
Warning addressed to blackmailers and extortionists threatening the Jews and the Poles
concealing them, published on 18 March 1943 in “Biuletyn Informacyjny” – an underground
press release of the Home Army (translation pp. 17–18)
Poland
29
Verdict passed on 7 July 1943 by a Polish conspiratorial special court in Warsaw. The person
listed as no. 8 was sentenced to death (the verdict was carried out) for “blackmailing and
denouncing Polish citizens of Jewish nationality in hiding to the German authorities”
30
Poland
Wanda Filipowiczowa-Krahelska
Zofia Kossak-Szczucka
“Weronika”
Ferdynand Arczyński
“Marek”, “Ferdynand”,
“Łukowski”
Władysław Bartoszewski
“Ludwik”, “Teofil”
Maria Kann
Irena Sendlerowa “Jolanta”
Witold Bieńkowski “Jan”,
“Kalski”, “Wencki”
Julian Grobelny “Trojan”
Adolf Berman, “Borowski”,
“Adam”
Some of the activists of the “Żegota” Council for Aid to Jews
Poland
Ursuline nuns from Kraków, who during the war rescued 15 Jewish children
Henryk Sławik – an official of the Polish
government-in-exile, who together with his
co-workers in Hungary saved about 5 000
Jews by forging documents. In 1944 the
Germans murdered him in the Mauthausen-Gusen camp. Photograph from
G. Łubczyk, Polski Wallenberg. Rzecz
o Henryku Sławiku, Warszawa 2003
31
THE SUBCARPATHIAN REGION
The locality of Markowa, the place of residence of the eight members of the
Ulma family killed for concealing Jews, lies in the Subcarpathian voivodeship. At
the time of the outbreak of the war in 1939, this region was inhabited by at least
120 000 Jews. A population census taken in 1931 shows that the Jews comprised
more than 8 % of the entire population of Subcarpathia. They lived chiefly in the
local towns: more than 17 000 in Przemyśl (i.e. almost 34 % of all the residents),
and over 11 000 in Rzeszów (approximately 42 %). In some small towns the
Jews constituted more than 70 % of the inhabitants. Assimilation with the Polish
population was extremely slow, and to a considerable extent both communities
remained distant. Only Jewish children maintained daily contact with their Polish
peers – the majority attended free-of-charge Polish schools since their parents could
not afford private education. Limited contact between the Jewish residents of the
majority of the small towns and the Polish villagers considerably affected the mutual
perception of both groups. The fact that the Jews monopolised certain professions,
in particular petty trade and industry, produced the impression of Jewish economic
exploitation, a view shared by part of the Polish community (mainly the peasants).
In the pre-war region of Rzeszów 45 % of the medical profession and 40 % of
the lawyers were Jewish, and since those services, especially in the countryside,
which was severely affected by the crisis, were relatively expensive, many Poles
held a negative attitude towards the Jews. As a rule, anti-Semitic moods did not
assume the form of physical aggression, but prompted boycotting Jewish shops and
firms. Deep religious divisions were also inauspicious for assimilation. Some Jews
regarded the early Christians as apostates, and certain Poles considered the Jews to
be “Christ-killers”. As a rule, however, the coexistence of the two groups can be
described as adequate. Interestingly, very often, especially in the villages, negative
assessments were formulated with regard to those Jews who were unfamiliar, lived
in the cities or held “important state posts”. Closest neighbours, frequently with
a financial status identical as that of the peasants or even worse off, enjoyed a very
good opinion and were willingly assisted in difficult situations. The attitude of the
Jews towards the Poles was probably similar.
The Germans overran more than 90 % of the territory of the present-day
Subcarpathian region in the first two weeks of September 1939. In not quite two
months of Wehrmacht military administration many local inhabitants, including
E. Rączy, Pomoc Polaków dla ludności żydowskiej na Rzeszowszczyźnie 1939–1945, Rzeszów 2008, p. 26.
Upon the basis of a poll conducted among the inhabitants of Markowa and interviews with villagers in the
region of Rzeszów.
34
The Subcarpathian Region
several hundred Jews, were killed in various circumstances. Almost 21 000 Jews
(including some of the residents of Łańcut and its environs) were forced to leave their
homes and move to terrains occupied by the Soviet Union. During the first days of
the occupation the Germans set fire to a synagogue in Łańcut, but the building was
saved thanks to the intervention of the Polish aristocrat Alfred Potocki. In October
1939 the terrains in question became incorporated into the General Government,
administered by the Germans. As in other parts of the GG, anti-Jewish laws were
rapidly introduced. The Star of David was to brand all Jewish stores and then the whole
Jewish population. The Jews were deprived of their property, prohibited to leave their
places of residence, and in the towns – to enter the “Aryan” districts. Forced labour for
the occupant was introduced. The Jews could no longer pursue the majority of their
pre-war professions. Joseph Riesenbach recollected that his parents were forced to
make their home available for accommodation for the Germans and to hand over furs,
blankets and valuable possessions. He also remembered that in the winter they were
forced to walk ten kilometres to the nearest town to clear the roads of snow, without
any remuneration or even food.
The Germans also implemented forced labour for all Jews by establishing heavy
labour camps. In the Subcarpathian region they set up 22 such camps, i.a. in Pustków
near Dębica, Szebnie near Jasło, Huta Komorowska near Nowa Dęba, and Zasłanie
near Sanok. More than 30 000 Jewish inmates worked in appalling conditions, forced
to carry out construction work, build roads, or work in the forests and for the munitions
industry.
During this first period of terror the Poles became its victims to an equal extent.
The AB-Aktion involved the systematic murder of the Polish intelligentsia and persons
involved before the war in pro-independence efforts. The Germans also hunted down
all those Poles who refused to observe the occupation rulings. It is estimated that in
1939–1941, prior to the decision about the extermination of the Jews, some 1 100
Poles and 900 Jews were murdered in the Rzeszów region.
Ghettoes were set up in Subcarpathia in the second half of 1941. Up to the summer
of 1942 their number totalled 17, some of which were closed ghettoes (the same as in
Warsaw and Kraków)10. In mid-July 1942 the Germans inaugurated the annihilation
of the local Jewish population. SS-Hauptsturmführer Martin Fellenz, head of the SS
and police for the Kraków district, supervised the campaign, which lasted until the
middle of December of that year. The Jews were deported from numerous localities
E. Rączy, Pomoc Polaków..., p. 33.
W. Bonusiak, Łańcut w latach 1918–1939 [in:] Łańcut. Studia i szkice z dziejów miasta, ed. W. Bonusiak,
Rzeszów 1997, p. 270; T. Brustin-Bernstein, Łańcut pod okupacją nazistów [in:] Łańcut. Życie i zagłada
społeczności żydowskiej – this is a translation of a part of The Lanzut Book, Israel 5724–1963, available in the
Public Library in Łańcut, call no. 48/III.
Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute, 301/840, 301/882, 301/2981. Accounts by Regina Landau, Rózia
Leichter and Fela Walke-Rozenblit.
J. Riesenbach, The Story of the Survival of the Riesenbach Family, www.riesenbach.com.
E. Rączy, Stosunki polsko-żydowskie w latach drugiej wojny światowej na Rzeszowszczyźnie [in:] Polacy
i Żydzi pod okupacją niemiecką 1939–1945. Studia i materiały, ed. A. Żbikowski, Warszawa 2006, p. 898.
10
Zagłada Żydów na Rzeszowszczyźnie. Album pamięci, prep. by E. Rączy, I. Witowicz, Rzeszów – Warszawa
2004, p. 68.
35
to small towns, where a so-called selection (Selektion) took place. The young and the
healthy were sent to labour camps. The remaining persons were murdered on the spot
or transported to the death camp in Bełżec, the site of the greatest crime committed
against the Jews of Subcarpathia. In numerous villages, for instance in the county of
Jarosław, the Jews were shot without any previous “selection”11. In July and August
1942 the Jews of such localities as Łańcut, Leżajsk, and Radymno were resettled to
a camp in Pełkinie, and several weeks later transported to Bełżec12.
The Germans started to build the first death camp in occupied Poland in the autumn
of 1941. The first trains carrying Jews from Lublin and Lwów arrived to Bełżec on
17 March 1942, and the passengers were instantly killed. The intense mass-scale
extermination campaign went on until the late autumn of 1942, when as many as 4 000
– 5 000 people were murdered daily. In not quite a year the camp gas chambers were
used for the annihilation of about 500 000 people from, i.a. Lublin, Lwów, Kraków,
Tarnów, Rzeszów, and Kołomyja, including approximately 25 000 – 30 000 from the
Reich, the former Czech Republic and Slovakia13.
At the same time, terror applied towards the Poles continued to grow, albeit it
never reached the same dimension as in the case of the Jewish population. At this
stage, the Germans did not intend to murder all the Poles, but to exploit them as much
as possible, a policy opposed by the increasingly strong Polish Underground State,
including the partisan movement. The Germans responded to resistance with force
and growing repressions against every form of illegal activity, even if it involved only
illicit food trade. Upon the basis of a single decree issued by the General Governor
(2 October 1943) about “combating attempts aimed against German reconstruction
in the GG”, 2 422 persons were shot in not quite two years, not to mention people
murdered in camps and prisons. Numerous villages, including Przewrotne, Medynia
Głogowska, Łopuszka Wielka, Kaszyce, Rokietnica, and Czelatyce, became the victims
of a pacification campaign14. As has been said, the death penalty was introduced for
assisting persons of Jewish extraction.
Since the rescuers acted in great secrecy, we are unable to determine today how many
Jews survived in the region of Rzeszów thanks to Polish aid. At the end of 1944 the
Central Committee of Jews in Poland (Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce) registered
2 921 Jews from the area in question. According to the studies conducted by Elżbieta
Rączy, an outstanding expert on the history of the Holocaust and Polish assistance in
the region of Rzeszów, the majority survived while concealed by the Poles. At least
1 600 persons helped15, of which the Germans shot no less than 20016. Estimates relating
to the rescuers are extremely cautious, and it is accepted that it was necessary for about
ten people to become involved in saving the life of a single Jew. 381 residents of the
region of Rzeszów received the Righteous among the Nations of the World medal from
the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem17.
Ibidem, p. 111.
Ibidem, p. 115.
13
R. Kuwałek, Obóz zagłady w Bełżcu, Lublin – Bełżec 2005, p. 13, 17, 25, 54.
14
15
E. Rączy, Stosunki polsko-żydowskie..., p. 891; E. Rączy, Pomoc Polaków..., pp. 120–122.
16
17
Ibidem, p. 121. The author also informs that the medal was not presented to those persons who helped Polish
Christians of Jewish descent. On the Righteous see also: M. Urynowicz, Zorganizowana i indywidualna pomoc
11
12
36
The forms of the assistance rendered to the Jews varied greatly. Among the 630
cases examined by Elżbieta Rączy, 460 (73 %) involved concealment, 22 (3,5 %) – the
provision of documents, 62 (9,8 %) – food supplies, 39 (6,2 %) – immediate help, and
47 (7,5 %) – other forms of aid18. In comparison to those occupied terrains where the
degree of the assimilation of the Jews was greater, the number of people in the region
of Rzeszów who attempted to live thanks to forged documents was slight. The small
part played by immediate help, evidenced in the source material, is due to the fact
that the available information concerns rather the survivors. It is highly likely that the
Germans later killed many persons who received only such assistance19. The Poles
decided to help the local Jews for assorted reasons, mostly pre-war acquaintanceship
(28,3 %) and friendship (9,6 %). Money played a minor part (4,9 %)20. In their postwar assessments of the conditions in which they were concealed, more than a half of
all the Jews described them as very good, one-third – as good, and in less than one case
for every ten – as bad or very bad21.
Hiding the Jews in small and medium towns, where all the inhabitants knew each
other and experienced identical problems with food supplies, encountered greatest
difficulties. The conditions in the villages were not much more favourable. Here too
everyone was acquainted with his neighbours, and, as rule, only persons living on
the outskirts decided to conceal the Jews22, although even such conditions did not
guarantee success. A single instance of unsuitable behaviour on the part of the Jews or
an ordinary accident sufficed to give rise to suspicion. Rumours spread fast. In certain
cases, the Polish rescuers were executed and their farms were burned down even if it
could not be proven that the peasant had actually given shelter to Jews, as in Podborze,
when on 23 April 1943 German police detachments set fire to 21 farmsteads while
searching for concealed Jews. In other examples the Germans resorted to repressions
for help rendered to Jews hiding in the forests23.
Assistance was extended not only by individuals or families. Catholic monastic
orders – the Sisters of Our Lady of Sorrow, the Little Servants Sisters of the Immaculate
Conception, and the Benedictine nuns in the region of Rzeszów were particularly
dedicated. The Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus from Przemyśl concealed in
their orphanage in Mickiewicza Street 13 Jewish children amidst a group of 60 Polish
orphans from Volhynia24. Help was also provided by, i.a. the Albertine Brothers from
Przemyśl and the Michaelites (the Congregation of Saint Michael the Archangel) from
Miejsce Piastowe. In many instances aid was rendered by members of the diocesan
clergy who, i.a. forged birth certificates. Rev. Eugeniusz Okoń from Radomyśl
helped Jerzy Nikodem Lewinkopf vel Jerzy Kosiński, the author of The Painted Bird.
Polaków dla ludności żydowskiej eksterminowanej przez okupanta niemieckiego w okresie drugiej wojny
światowej [in:] Polacy i Żydzi..., pp. 261–262.
18
19
Ibidem.
20
Ibidem, p. 101.
21
Ibidem, p. 111
22
Ibidem, p. 62. An interesting description of problems relating to the concealment of the Jews in the region of
Rzeszów and a comparison with conditions prevailing in Warsaw in: G. S. Paulsson, Utajone miasto. Żydzi po
aryjskiej stronie Warszawy (1940–1945), Kraków 2007, pp. 329–332, 340.
23
E. Rączy, Pomoc Polaków..., pp. 66–67.
24
Ibidem, p. 73.
37
Rev. Jan Gielarowski from Michałówka was imprisoned, and died, in KL Auschwitz
for concealing Jews in his rectory. In Rymanów Rev. Jan Zawrzycki rescued seven
Jews. His help became known after the war when the Security Office arrested him and
Jews from Palestine wrote a letter in his defence25.
As in other parts of Poland the fundamental task of the whole Underground (not
only the part controlled by the Government of the Republic of Poland in exile) in the
region of Rzeszów entailed a struggle waged against the occupant and the protection
of Polish citizens of Polish nationality. Special help for the repressed and murdered
Jews was thus never organised. Nor were Jews enlisted in armed detachments (with
few exceptions)26. The local Home Army commanders learnt that once captured and
tortured by the Germans, many Jews who had established contact with the Underground
gave away dangerous information. Consequently, in March 1943 the Home Army
banned “contact with escaping Jews and helping them”27. Nonetheless, in certain cases
both the Home Army and the Peasant Battalions (Bataliony Chłopskie – BCh, which
in the autumn of 1943 became part of the AK) did provide succour. The Jews were
helped to leave the ghetto and outfitted with forged documents, i.a. enabling them to
travel to Germany as Polish labourers. Appeals addressed to the population called for
refusing to take part in the street roundups of the Jews, carried out by the Germans.
Death sentences were issued against persons who helped to kill the Jews. An armed
detachment composed of Jews fought as part of the Home Army28.
In Subcarpathia, the Council for Aid to Jews managed to assist a small number of
people, and proved to be much more active in Warsaw, Kraków or Lwów. Pertinent
sources indicate that apart from single instances of help for the inmates of two labour
camps, shortly before the appearance of the Soviet Army the Council supported also
193 Jews in hiding29.
The number of rescuers was much too slight to save the lives of the much larger
group of persecuted Jews. The overwhelming majority of the Poles remained passive.
Some did not have the courage to help, fearing severe consequences; others were guided
by anti-Jewish prejudices. To a certain extent this passivity was also the outcome of the
fact that the liquidation of Jewish concentrations in this particular terrain was sudden
and unexpected. Upon certain occasions, a single day sufficed to execute the whole
Jewish community of a small town or village. Since the extermination campaign in
the General Government started in the Subcarpathian region, some of the Jews did
not assume that the “evacuation to the east” announced by the Germans would signify
death in Bełżec. Polish society also included persons who were outright pleased with
the plight of the Jews; some Poles took part in the street roundups and denounced Jews
in hiding.
Such attitudes encountered the reaction of the Underground. A conspiracy press
organ of the peasant movement, the strongest political force in the Subcarpathian region,
declared: “One of the most tragic fragments of the German occupation of Poland is the
Jewish question. United, we condemn the heinous murders committed by the Germans
27
Quoted after: ibidem, p. 84.
28
29
Ibidem, p. 93.
25
26
38
against the Jews. On the other hand, we make tentative mention of those over-zealous
village elders and firemen who capture the Jews and hand them over to the murderers.
In this case, neither vodka nor fear of the occupant may stifle conscience qualms.
‘A Jew is not human’ claims Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, and thus one may
do anything. One may keep the Jew until he becomes deprived of the remnants of his
property and then throw him out into the cold and condemn him to endless wanderings,
or anonymously turn him over to the thugs”30.
The region of Rzeszów never became the topic of such thorough studies as those
relating to, e.g. the Świętokrzyski region on Polish participation in German anti-Jewish campaigns31. Nevertheless, the initial research carried out by Elżbieta Rączy
indicates that: “In the region of Rzeszów Jews were denounced or rounded up in the
streets by the Poles or with their participation in at least 110 localities. In certain places
several events of this type were recorded”32. The same author added that the German
authorities attempted to make use of all possible methods to trace the concealed Jews
and their helpers, and even resorted to provocation by using special surrogate escapees
supposedly seeking refuge. The Germans also encouraged the Poles to denounce the
Jews by promising awards (food and alcohol) and 25 % of all the valuables carried
by the victims. In 36 studied instances the reasons for deconspiration were Polish
informers (18), information obtained from the Jews (7), carelessness on the part of the
persons in hiding (5), and provocation (2); in four cases other circumstances proved
decisive33.
The Underground State condemned such deeds and even carried out the death
sentence against particularly active traitors34. At the same time, the Polish-language
press inspired or issued by the Germans published articles, which reinforced anti-Semitic stereotypes. Their authors praised the Germans for sharing Jewish property
with the Poles at half-price. According to the divide et impera principle, the Poles were
portrayed as the greatest anti-Semites, thus inflaming negative attitudes among the
Jews. The purpose of such a policy was to, i.a. discourage the Jews from seeking help
among the Polish population35.
Quotation from: “Wieści” XII 1943, after: E. Rączy, Stosunki polsko-żydowskie..., p. 909.
A. Skibińska, J. Petelewicz, Udział Polaków w zbrodniach na Żydach na prowincji regionu świętokrzyskiego,
“Zagłada Żydów” 2005, no. 1, pp. 114–147.
32
E. Rączy, Stosunki polsko-żydowskie..., p. 909.
33
34
Ibidem, p. 86.
35
Ibidem, p. 40.
30
31
Rzeszów
39
Area of the present-day Subcarpathian voivodeship in 1939–1944
(map by: Elżbieta Rączy and Igor Witowicz)
Bełżec
death camp
Rzeszów
Rzeszów
sites of the mass-scale extermination of the Jewish population in the years 1939–1944
localities where the Poles rescued the Jews in 1939–1944
village of Markowa
Rzeszów
40
Harvest near Łańcut in 1937 or 1938; among the Polish Skręt family, third from the right:
a Jew named Szall
Deportation of the Jewish inhabitants of Tarnobrzeg to terrains occupied by the USSR in 1939
41
Synagogue in Mielec, burned
down by the Germans
in September 1939
Jews shot by the Germans in Rzeszów in 1940
42
German decree from 1940 limiting the freedom of movement of the Jews in Rzeszów
Barracks of the labour camp in Pełkinie, intended mainly for Soviet prisoners of war
and Polish Jews
43
Plaque informing about a Julag (a labour camp for the Jews) in Huta Komorowska
Bunker made by the inmates of a camp for the Poles, the Jews and for Soviet prisoners of war
in Pustków near Dębica
44
Announcement issued on 15 October 1941 by the German starosta of Jarosław, containing
a decree by General Governor Hans Frank about the death penalty for helping the Jews
(translation of the document, p. 16)
Kraków, 23 February 1944 – a German announcement informing about the execution of ten
persons from the Subcarpathian region, including Antoni Majkut, for “helping the Jews
by providing them with shelter”
45
46
A Jew and a Pole hung in the Rzeszów ghetto
47
Public execution of Michał Kruk, sentenced for helping the Jews, and of an unidentified Jew,
carried out in Przemyśl in September 1943
Execution of two Poles: Władysław Chaja from Sobowo and Antoni Urbaniak from the village
of Cygany, carried out in Tarnobrzeg on 6 December 1939. The purpose of such executions
was to warn against breaking the occupation law
48
Sister Barbara Kraciuk from the Congregation of Saint Michael the Archangel in Godowa
and her Jewish ward, Maria Kaleta
49
Fragment of a letter written by the Jews in defence of Rev. Jan Zawrzycki, arrested by the
communists in 1947, and containing the information that he rescued the Jews as “an upright
priest, who in the name of superior humanitarian slogans risked his life in critical moments
to save people from an inevitable death”, 1948
MARKOWA
The village of Markowa dates back the second half of the fourteenth century when
German settlers were brought over during the reign of Kazimierz the Great. The
Polonisation of the locally spoken tongue took place in the sixteenth and seventeenth
century, and Polish national awareness developed fully in the nineteenth century.
The settlement was large and prosperous. Land grants and the introduction of self-government (the second half of the nineteenth century) enhanced the villagers’ ability
to independently care for the welfare of the community. At the end of the nineteenth
century and during the early twentieth century Markowa became one of the pioneers
of the Polish rural cooperative movement.
From the beginning of the twentieth century political influence in Markowa was
enjoyed predominantly by the peasant parties: the Polish Peasant Party “Piast” (Polskie
Stronnictwo Ludowe “Piast”) and, subsequently, the Peasant Party (Stronnictwo Ludowe).
During the 1930s the local population participated in peasant strikes and demonstrations
against the unsatisfactory economic situation and anti-democracy restrictions.
During the interwar period Markowa had a population of 4 500. In 1933 the villagers
set up an Orkan People’s University in the neighbouring village of Gać. The presence
of the University resulted in an influx of an intelligentsia of peasant descent; in 1935
its members contributed to the establishment of a rural cooperative health centre, the
first of its sort in Poland.
As a result, in the second half of the 1930s the commune of Markowa witnessed
the emergence of a modern environment composed of the local intelligentsia and the
peasant elite. Successes achieved by the cooperative movement inspired yet another
idea: the publication of a national women’s magazine. Four issues of the monthly
“Kobieta Wiejska” appeared from April to August 1939, edited by Hanna Ciekotowa,
the wife of a doctor from the local cooperative health centre. The launching of the
periodical also involved Zofia Solarzowa, later the author of Do boju o Polskę Ludową
(To Battle for a People’s Poland), the hymn of the Peasant Battalions.
The inhabitants of the large and affluent village also included Jews. According to
statistics based on a national census from 1931, there were 1 030 Jews in the villages
M. Drożdż-Szczybura, Wybrane problemy ochrony krajobrazu kulturowego polskiej wsi na przykładzie
Markowej w woj. podkarpackim, Kraków 2000, p. 11.
M. Szpytma, Świadomość narodowa chłopów polskich w Galicji w latach 1867–1914, typewritten M.A.
dissertation presented at the Jagiellonian University in 1999.
T. Szylar, Markowa wieś spółdzielcza [in:] Z dziejów wsi Markowa, ed. J. Półćwiartek, Rzeszów 1993, pp.
211–241.
T. Szylar, Markowa...; I. Solarz, Historia powstania Spółdzielni Zdrowia w Markowej [in:] 25 lat Spółdzielni
Zdrowia w Markowej, Warszawa 1960, pp. 9–43.
Z. Andres, Z dziejów kultury i życia literackiego [in:] Z dziejów wsi..., pp. 247–252.
52
Markowa
in the county of Przeworsk, i.e. 2 % of the whole population. The majority lived in the
small towns of the county, where the Jews comprised almost 30 % of the residents.
In a 1921 census 126 Inhabitants of Markowa declared their adherence to the Mosaic
faith. In later years, the number of the Jews in the county of Przeworsk declined
by about 6 % due to inner migrations and emigration; we may, therefore, estimate
with a great dose of probability that in 1939 120 persons of Jewish descent populated
Markowa. Contemporary information based on accounts by older villagers coincides
with those calculations. Witness statements show that the number of Jewish families
in Markowa oscillated from twenty to thirty.
The Jews of Markowa had three houses of prayer (bet ha-midrash)10. During the
more important holidays they prayed in a synagogue in Łańcut, and they were buried
in Jewish cemeteries in close by towns.
The established topography of the Jewish families in Markowa shows that their homes
did not constitute a cohesive concentration and, with two exceptions, were scattered
across the village. The western part of Markowa, known as Upper, had three Jewish
houses, commonly known as the “colony”. In Lower Markowa, to the east of the church
and along the southern bank of the Markówka river, seven Jewish houses stood among
Polish residences on a kilometre-long stretch along a side road11. For this reason the
district became known as Kazimierz, in the fashion of the Kazimierz quarter in Kraków,
inhabited mainly by the adherents of Judaism. The name is used up to this day12.
As in other villages, the Jews of Markowa were predominantly tradesmen. They
bought up farm produce, animals, and fruit, and ran shops selling industrial goods.
Several Jewish families in Markowa had farms, and in 1931 they owned 36 hectares,
slightly more than 1 % of arable land13. The community also included a person teaching
Jewish children the history and religion of their nation14.
The relations between the Poles and the Jews were satisfactory. At the same time,
both communities appeared to live next to each other. One of the residents of Markowa
described the Jews as “a mysterious group although not closed; nevertheless, one
had to be invited in order to pay a visit. Their homes were intended exclusively for
them”15. Another person recollected vividly the Jewish wedding ceremonies, which
she observed as a neighbour, claiming that the Jews did not ask their Polish neighbours
over. Nor did she recall whether the Poles issued similar invitations to the Jews, adding
Drugi spis powszechny ludności z dn. 2 XII 1931 r. Mieszkania i gospodarstwa domowe. Ludność. Stosunki
zawodowe. Województwo lwowskie bez miasta Lwowa. Warszawa 1938, pp. 38–39.
Skorowidz miejscowości Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej, vol. 13: Województwo lwowskie, Warszawa 1924, p. 34.
Among 126 persons only five declared affiliation to the Jewish nationality, and the remaining described themselves
as Poles. Markowa was also inhabited by 11 Uniates, of whom two gave Ruthenian nationality. The local Seventh-day Adventists did not submit a religious declaration although they had already inaugurated their activity.
W. Wierzbiniec, Żydzi w województwie lwowskim w okresie międzywojennym. Zagadnienia demograficzne
i społeczne, Rzeszów 2003, p. 50.
I have used 18 accounts, which I collected in the summer and autumn of 2003 among villagers born in the
1920s and the first half of the 1930s (further as: account, initial of first name, surname).
10
Accounts – W. Ulma, S. Rewer; J. Riesenbach, The Story of the Survival of the Riesenbach Family,
www.riesenbach.com.
11
Accounts – A. Kuźniar, S. Rewer.
12
In Przeworsk the street inhabited exclusively by the Jews was known as Kazimierzowska.
13
S. Cwynar, Wieś w okresie niewoli i II Rzeczypospolitej [in:] Z dziejów..., p. 65.
14
Account – B. Inglot.
15
Account – J. Tejchma.
53
Markowa
that: “Even if they had been invited they would have not accepted since the food was
not kosher”. On the other hand, she remembered how a Jewish female neighbour often
came for a chat16.
The Polish and Jewish communities kept apart, but contacts between school-age
children were much more frequent. During the school year of 1938/1939 22 pupils of
Jewish extraction attended the seven-grade elementary school in Markowa17. According
to an account by their Polish school friends the Jews were better students, especially
of foreign languages. Emphasis is also placed on friendly relations: “If conflicts of any
sort did exist, they resembled those encountered in a present-day school”18. Joseph
Riesenbach, who up to 1939 had graduated from four grades, and whose further
education was halted when the Germans forbade Jewish children to attend school,
had different recollections. His accounts mention that before the war school children
of Jewish descent were discriminated for religious reasons by their peers and some
of the teachers, although he did not mention any examples19. The village was the site
of offensive incidents caused by young people – every year, Holy Week celebrations
featured the hanging of a mannequin of Judas, the treacherous apostle, on trees in front
of Jewish houses. This custom, which some of the villagers, especially the elderly,
condemned, was to remind the onlookers that the Jews killed Christ20. Jewish families
protested, and frequently summoned the police or complained to the parents of the
adolescent authors of the staging21.
***
The outbreak of the Second World War opened a new chapter in the history of the
village. After the invasion of Poland the Germans introduced their own administrative
division of the country, and throughout the occupation the commune of Markowa was
part of the county of Jarosław, headed by a German county starosta (Kreishauptmann)22.
German police and Polish, so-called Blue Police force were organised. German
gendarmerie, part of the Ordnungspolizei, was established for the purpose of keeping
“order” in rural terrains and smaller towns. Up to 1941 gendarmerie outposts in
Jarosław and Przeworsk supervised the Blue Police in Markowa. This extensive range
of activity was changed at the insistence of the starosta, wary of insufficient control
of the terrain under him23. On 1 January 1941 new outposts were set up in the county
of Jarosław, including one in Łańcut, which encompassed, i.a. Markowa. To the end
Account – Z. Pausz.
S. Cwynar, Wieś w okresie niewoli..., p. 86.
18
Accounts – J. Tejchma, S. Kuźniar.
19
J. Riesenbach, The Story of the Survival....
20
This custom, which despite the absence of the Jews survived in neighbouring villages up to the 1960s, has been
described by Alina Cała: Wizerunek Żyda w polskiej kulturze ludowej, Warszawa 1992.
21
Accounts – B. Inglot, H. Szpytma.
22
Amtliches gemainde – und Dorfverzeichnis für das Generalgouvernment auf Grund der Sumarischen
Bevölkerungsbestandsaufname am 1 Marz 1943, Krakau 1943, p. 21. At the time of the German occupation the commune
of Markowa was composed of the following gromadas: Białoboki, Chodakówka, Gać, Markowa, and Sietesz.
23
Amtliches Fernsprechbuch für das Generalgovernment, 1942, p. 72. This telephone book mentions that in
January 1942 the gendarmerie outpost in Łańcut supervised Polish police stations in Markowa, Czarna and
Albigowa. An earlier edition from January 1941 shows that Markowa and Kosina were supervised by the
gendarmerie in Przeworsk.
16
17
54
Markowa
of the occupation the head of the gendarmerie in Łańcut was Leutnant Eilert Dieken,
and his deputy was Meister (sergeant) Gustaw Unbehend. One of the gendarmes was
Anwärter Candidate d. Gendarmerie Josef Kokott, who served from 1 January 1941
to the evacuation of 1944. Until 5 April 1940 his superior was Meister Schlemm, and
in 1943 and 1944 – Leutnant Alois Klemmer, commanders of the county gendarmerie
platoon (Gendarmerie Zug)24.
Despite the retention of the heretofore division into communes and gromadas (the
smallest administrative units), the Germans abolished the village and communal self-government. On the other hand, they maintained the functions of the wójt and the
sołtys, whose direct superiors were the German starostas. Until March 1942 the wójt
of the commune of Markowa was Józef Szatkowski, who held the post before the war,
succeeded by Władysław Urban and Michał Barakasza, who fulfilled this function to
the end of the war. Neither of the two men was born or lived in Markowa. The sołtys of
the commune of Markowa was Andrzej Kud (to 1943), followed by Teofil Kielar25.
Life in the village changed: terror, curfew, contingents, compulsory public order
service, and the conscription of young men into the Construction Service (Baudienst)
became part of daily existence26. 118 inhabitants of Markowa were deported to
Germany for forced labour, and from the end of 1939 the commune was compelled
to guarantee housing for 514 Poles expelled by the Germans from terrains annexed
into the Third Reich. When in the eastern territories of occupied Poland Ukrainian
nationalists started to conduct ethnic purges, bearing all the marks of genocide (the
deaths of tens of thousands of Poles and their Ukrainian helpers), thousands of terrified
Poles left their homes and fled westward. A group of 1 600 found refuge in Markowa
(where they first appeared in the summer of 1943)27.
Markowa was a well-organised cooperative village, whose attractive houses
differed from those in the neighbouring villages; for generations, its residents, the
majority (70 %) with German surnames, were unwilling to welcome outsiders. For
these reasons Markowa, together with three villages in the vicinity, found itself within
the range of the interests of the Institute for German Work in the East (Institut für
Deutsche Ostarbeit), established in Kraków by General Governor Hans Frank. The
Institute embarked upon research into the medieval German settlement movement in
terrains, which became part of the General Government. In 1940–1942 it dispatched
its workers to Markowa, where they examined not only the anthropological features
of the local inhabitants, such as the shape of their skulls, but also the etymology of the
S. Zabierowski, Zarys struktury organizacyjnej i obsady stanowisk kierowniczych placówek żandarmerii
niemieckiej we wschodniej części Dystryktu Krakowskiego w latach 1939 do 1945 [in:] Studia nad okupacją
hitlerowską południowo-wschodniej części Polski, vol. 1, ed. S. Zabierowski, Rzeszów 1976, pp. 36–37.
25
State Archive in Przemyśl, 196, Commune of Markowa 1891–1954, files of the commune of Markowa, Book
of session protocols: the Commune Board 1935–1939, the Budget Commission 1941–1944/1945; State Archive
in Rzeszów, 941, Acts of the commune of Markowa 1941–1954, file 13, Budget for the year 1943/1944.
26
IPN Archive, W 1459, Acts of case S 1/67 concerning Franz Schmidt – a Gestapo functionary in Jarosław.
During the war Markowa lost a major part of its elite. Apart from Józef Ulma the other pre-war social activists
killed at the time were: Ignacy Solarz – murdered by the Gestapo in 1940, Captain Władysław Ciekot – killed by
the NKVD in Katyn, Major Antoni Flejszar – killed by NKVD in Kharkov in the spring of 1940, and Mieczysław
Flejszar – murdered by unidentified perpetrators in March 1945, already after the arrival of the Soviet army.
27
Archive of the Metropolitan See in Przemyśl. Survey concerning events in the parish of Markowa during the
German occupation, prepared by the parish priest, Rev. Ewaryst Dębicki, 16 August 1945.
24
55
Markowa
names and the unique construction of the houses28. The outcome was a book by Gisele
Hildebrandt, predominantly dealing with Markowa. The studies led to the conclusion
that the residents of Markowa were suitable for re-Germanisation, but German agitators
urging them to sign the Volksliste failed29.
As in the whole country, response to German rule assumed the form of Polish
Underground military and political structures. The Union of Armed Struggle and later
on the Peasant Battalions appeared in Markowa. In February 1940 one of the leaders
of the Polish Underground, General Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski, stayed in the
neighbouring village of Sonina while on his way to terrains occupied by the USSR.
There, the first soldiers of the ZWZ (in 1942 transformed into the Home Army),
who came from, i.a. Markowa, took an oath in his presence. In the military structure
the communal outpost in Markowa became known under the cryptonym “Marian”.
It belonged to the District of Przeworsk, supervised by the Przemyśl Inspectorate
(Jarosław). The commander of the communal outpost was Antoni Dzwierzyński “Ryś”.
About a hundred AK soldiers were active in the entire commune (prior to the merge of
the Battalions and the AK)30.
Already at the end of 1939 members of the Peasant Party and the Peasant Youth
Union “Wici” (Związek Młodzieży Wiejskiej “Wici”) in Markowa set up in the
commune and the village conspiracy party structures, the so-called threesomes. The
Peasant Battalion structures functioning in the commune in 1942 (commander: Michał
Ulma “Kamień”) were later accompanied by the People’s Security Guard (Ludowa
Straż Bezpieczeństwa, commander: Mieczysław Pelc “Kożuchowski”). Two Peasant
Battalion platoons in Markowa were composed of 74 persons31.
***
For the Jewish population of Polish towns the middle of 1942 was the last moment
to organise group escapes and find shelter; afterwards, only a few were able to do
so32. This was the time when the first city escapees appeared in Markowa. The village,
however, was not a safe haven. Many of its inhabitants recall that already in 1939–
–1941 German functionaries committed several murders and numerous robberies. One
of the first victims was an ailing Jew. As a rule, Konstanty Kindler, a German from
Grodziec near Konin and a senior constable in Markowa, subsequently transferred to
the German gendarmerie, perpetrated the crimes33. Kindler, whose cruelty is recollected
with horror up to this day, frequently accosted one of the richest Jewish families, the
Archive of Professor Andrzej R. Małecki in Kraków. Report made for the Underground by Polish researchers
working at Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit.
29
S. Dobosz, W walce z okupantem hitlerowskim [in:] Z dziejów wsi..., pp. 96–97; G. Hildebrandt,
Siedlungsgeographische Untersuchungen im Gebiet der deutsch-mittelalterrlichen Waldhufendörfer um
Landshut: Markowa, Gać und Bialoboki, Krakau 1942. During the occupation two persons signed the Volksliste,
but that had nothing in common with the campaign conducted by the Institute.
30
S. Dobosz, W walce z okupantem..., p. 104, 106; A. Zagórski, Z badań nad strukturą organizacyjną ruchu oporu
na Rzeszowszczyźnie (Związek Walki Zbrojnej – Armia Krajowa), “Studia Historyczne” 1968, 11, fasc. 1 (40),
pp. 97–111.
31
S. Dobosz, W walce z okupantem..., p. 112; State Archive in Przemyśl, 891, Folios of Stanisław Kojder, folio
38, Organizacja ROCh w gminie Markowa.
32
Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute, 301/840, account by Regina Landau.
33
State Archive in Przemyśl, 891, Folios of Stanisław Kojder, folio 13, Lists of Polish police functionaries in the
county of Przeworsk together with their characterstic, 1944, p. 14; Accounts – S. Rewer, A. Kuźniar; IPN Archive
Branch in Rzeszów, 11/26, Acts of the trial of Konstanty Kindler II Dsspec 1883/45, IV K 7/46, IV K 69/47.
28
56
Markowa
Goldmans, for the purposes of extortion. Afterwards, Estera Goldman would say to
her neighbours, predicting a dire future: “We, the Jews, are the breakfast, and you, the
Poles, will be served for dinner”34.
Up to 30 April 1942 all the Jewish inhabitants of Markowa were compelled to file
motions for kenkartas (identity documents), and as a result were listed in a detailed
register35. Some were forced to leave the village – they were taken to a labour camp in
Pełkinie, and then shot in the woods around Wólka Pełkińska or murdered in the death
camp in Bełżec36. After unsuccessful attempts at convincing the Jews of Markowa to
“leave eastwards” (which denoted being transported to the death camp) the majority
was shot on the spot37. The most tragic moments in occupied Markowa took place
in July 1942. It is difficult to establish whether the “hunt for the Jews”, which lasted
throughout the summer and the autumn, was carried out only by the German gendarmes
or also by members of other formations who arrived in the village. The local Jews were
driven out of their homes and temporarily detained. One of the residents recalled that
a Jew under escort noticed an acquaintance of his who, well aware of his fate, managed
to cry out: “See you soon, neighbour!”38.
On the night preceding the anti-Jewish operation two Polish policemen on friendly
terms with the Riesenbach family advised its members to flee immediately. Many Jews
had already abandoned their houses, to be pursued and ultimately captured39. A teenage
girl named Idka escaped from prison and made way to the home of sołtys Andrzej
Kud, who at the time was playing host to a number of strangers but remained unruffled
and did not disclose the identity of the person knocking at his door. Subsequently, she
found cover in a neighbouring locality and survived the occupation.
The arrested Jews correctly guessed their fate. At night, packed in the cramped
prison, they shouted and prayed. In the morning, they were led outside and shot; their
bodies were interred in a former animal burial ground40. This out-of-the-way spot was
often used for executions of the Jews, also those from close-by localities. After the war,
the bodies were exhumed by the state and transferred to an unidentified cemetery41.
There are no precise data concerning the number of the victims – in all likelihood,
it totalled at least fifty42.
Account – H. Szpytma.
State Archive in Przemyśl, 196, Commune of Markowa 1891–1954, folio 116, Motions about issuing identity
documents for residents of the commune of Markowa 1942–1944. Extant 17 motions include the names of the
Jewish residents of five houses: Szifman, Didner, Goldman, Grünfeld, Beżem, Einhorn, Beständig, Rozengarten,
Rübenfeld, and Lorbenfeld, murdered probably in the second half of 1942.
36
T. Brustin-Bernstein, Łańcut pod okupacją..., p. 53 and following; E. Podhorizer-Sondel, O zagładzie Żydów
w Dystrykcie Krakowskim, “Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego” 1959, no. 30.
37
State Archive in Przemyśl, no. 891, Folios of Stanisław Kojder, p. 96.
38
Accounts – W. Szylar, J. Tejchma, W. Ulma, S. Niemczak.
39
J. Riesenbach, The Story of the Survival...
40
State Archive in Przemyśl, 891, Folios of Stanisław Kojder, folio 13, p. 14.
41
IPN Archive Branch in Rzeszów, 370, Polls of the Main Commission of the Prosecution of Nazi Crimes
in Poland, county of Łańcut, 1968. Information concerning the number of buried bodies is unavailable also at
the Information and Inquiry Office of the Polish Red Cross. The author has checked that in certain cases the
mentioned name of the site of burials – Michałówka near Radymno – is untrue.
42
Rejestr miejsc i faktów zbrodni popełnionych przez okupanta hitlerowskiego na ziemiach polskich w latach
1939–1945. Województwo rzeszowskie, Warszawa 1984, pp. 114–115.
34
35
57
Markowa
Since the main anti-Jewish operations were conducted during the milder part of the
year, some of the Jews managed to spend this time hidden in the fields. Others found
shelter in the groves and ravines to the south of Markowa. The majority then returned
to the village and sought refuge in peasant houses. The owners, however, feared the
consequences – some consented to a several days-long stay, until another form of
shelter could be found, others were only capable of leaving food in designated spots.
In certain cases the peasants refused all help and even denounced the Jews; by way of
example, a Jew named Szmul was detained and then escorted to the police station43.
After the Aktion the Germans realised that they had not killed every Jew in
Markowa. In November 1942 they ordered the local Fire Brigade to search all the
houses, outbuildings, and hiding places in the fields, and then to turn the Jews over to
the German authorities44. The order was fulfilled by groups of several firemen. Extant
sources make it impossible to resolve whether a refusal to carry out the command was
threatened with death or other penalties. Not much is known about the outcome of the
search. It has been established that two Jews hiding in a barn – Markieł and Fawek
– tried to escape, fell out of the attic and, wounded, were taken to the police station45.
***
The inhabitants of Markowa included persons who had the courage to provide
shelter for the persecuted Jews, thus enabling them to live through the occupation.
Heretofore publications mention 13 Jewish survivors in Markowa46. The author of
this study found that their number was at least 17 (and quite probably 21); he also
discovered the names of the rescuers and the rescued47. 20,8 % of the Jews living in
Markowa before the war went into hiding (24,1 % if we accept the maximum number)
and 14 % (or 17,5 %) survived48. This is an exceptionally large group compared with
Warsaw where, according to the research conducted by Gunnar S. Paulsson, 5 % of the
Jewish population found cover and 2 % lived through the occupation49. The survival
Account – B. Inglot. The anonymous author of one of the extant letters demands that the Szpytma family (who
actually probably never helped any Jews) immediately “expel” the Jews.
44
State Archive in Przemyśl, 891, Folios of Stanisław Kojder, folio 6, pp. 129–131.
45
Accounts – S. Kuźniar, S. Bytnar, B. Inglot, H. Kielar, Z. Pausz, A. Kuźniar. Searches for the Jews are described
also by Joseph Riesenbach (The Story of the Survival...), who wrote that firemen entered the basement where
he was hiding together with his family but thanks to effective concealment he remained undetected. Pertinent
mention was made also by Eugenia Einhorn in a letter addressed to the Jewish Historical Institute.
46
S. Dobosz, W walce z okupantem..., p. 95.
47
In 2004 the participants of one of the excursions from Israel, who toured the Ulma monument and the Skansen
museum in Markowa, included yet another person claming that he was a survivor from Markowa, but unable
to provide any details – neither the name of the rescuer or the site of the hiding place. A confirmation of this
fact would mean that we are dealing with an eighteenth survivor. Recently, Igor Witowicz and Elżbieta Rączy
discovered at the Jewish Historical Institute a letter by Eugenia Einhorn, the widow of Jakub Einhorn, maintaining
that three Jews hid together with her future husband: an unidentified married couple with a child.
48
For the sake of precision it must be added that not all the Jews concealed in Markowa lived in the village before
the war. Four persons resided in Łańcut, and several others moved to Jarosław on the eve of the war. We also know
of at least two cases (omitted in the above-mentioned percentage calculations) when Jews from Markowa went
into hiding in neighbouring localities: one instance ended well, but nothing is known about the second case.
49
G.S. Paulsson, Utajone miasto..., p. 328.
43
58
Markowa
rate in Markowa was equally high: 68 % (or 72 %)50. In Warsaw it amounted to
41 %51.
Available documents and eyewitness accounts make it possible to learn about the
fate of the Jewish survivors in Markowa; seven lived in as late as 2004.
The Riesenbach family of five, residing in the centre of Markowa, initially split up
and hid in two houses. Jacob, Ita, and their son, Joseph, stayed with Józef and Julia
Bar. Upon the request of the mother, the two daughters – Jenni and Marion, lived for
several months in the attic of the Kielar family, the Riesenbachs’ neighbours52. Later
on, they joined their parents at the Bar home, where both the owners and their daughter,
Janina, treated them with great kindness and continued to help despite a search of the
house. After the war the Riesenbachs left for Austria and then moved to Canada. In
2004 Joseph, Jenni and Marion were still living in Canada. In 2000 Joseph paid a visit
to Janina Bar in Markowa, shortly before her death, to express his gratitude53.
Six Jews bearing the surname Weltz moved to a barn owned by Antoni and Dorota
Szylar. They included Miriam and her four children – Moniek, Abraham, Reśka, and
Aron, and the latter’s wife, Shirley. When the owners noticed the fugitives’ presence the
Jews asked to stay for a few more days. The Szylars agreed despite fear produced by,
i.a. the proximity of a police station and concern for their own children (the adolescent
Zofia and Helena and the younger Eugeniusz, Franciszek and Janina). Quite possibly,
they did so because the Weltz family had been their neighbours, who on the eve of the
war moved to Jarosław. When several days later the Jews continued to hide in the barn,
the Szylars insisted that they leave. Subsequently, and in view of urgent pleas, they not
only consented to a longer stay but also permitted the Jewish family to occupy the attic
of the house and additionally welcomed Leon, the son of Aron and Shirley. Born in
1938, he had been living as Staś with a Polish family in Jarosław, and was moved to the
Szylars after the parents of other children noticed that the boy, playing in a sandbox,
was circumcised. Under the impact of the fate of the Ulmas, the Szylars pressed the
Weltz family to abandon its shelter. Beseeching and mentioning an imminent end of
the war the Jews once again won permission to hide. After the war the whole Weltz
family left for the United States, but maintained steady contact with the Szylars. In
2004 three of the survivors were living in the USA54.
Abraham Segal was the only member of his family to live through the Holocaust.
The Germans murdered his parents and siblings in eastern Poland. As a 13-years
old boy he evaded execution in Brzeżany and returned to his hometown of Łańcut,
from which he set off to the neighbouring village of Krzemienica; here, the Skrobacz
family, his parents’ acquaintances, offered him immediate shelter. Fearing that they
It is quite likely that the Szall and Goldman families were not the only to fail to survive in hiding to the end of
the war; the survival rate, therefore, was probably smaller. There are no data available for the other cases.
51
G.S. Paulsson, Utajone miasto..., p. 331. Upon the basis of figures provided by Shmuel Krakowski, Paulsson
calculated (pp. 329–330) that the survival rate among the Jews concealed in the Rzeszów region was 7 % (about
9 % of the Jewish population was in hiding). Krakowski, however, stressed in his article that the figures supplied
by him are extremely incomplete. Moreover, he did not take into consideration the 287 Jews living in Rzeszów
in 1945, and mentioned only seven in the county of Rzeszów. According to other sources (registers in the Central
Committee of Jews in Poland), the number of survivors and thus the survival rate should be doubled.
52
J. Matusz, Kto ratuje jedno życie, “Rzeczpospolita”, 24 March 2004.
53
J. Riesenbach, The Story of Survival...
54
Account – H. Kielar.
50
Markowa
59
might become the victims of deconspiration, they advised Abraham to go into hiding
in Markowa, far from gendarmerie outposts. Pretending to be Romek Kaliszewski
from Przemyśl, he was employed by Jan and Helena Cwynar, who had two teenage
daughters, Maria and Czesława. The Cwynars were among the wealthiest peasants in
Markowa: Jan was a well-known pre-war activist in the peasant movement, and during
the occupation he became a member of the underground authorities of the Peasant
Party in the county of Przeworsk. Initially, the Cwynars were unaware of Abraham’s
Jewish lineage. By the time they realised his true identity, they had become so attached
to him that they proposed to adopt him. In 1944 Segal left Markowa together with
the Red Army and enlisted in the Czech army. Today, he lives in Israel in a suburb of
Haifa, has 13 grandchildren, maintains contact with the inhabitants of Markowa, and
is interested in the life of the village55.
Michał and Maria Bar, the parents of five small children, rescued three members of
the Lorbenfeld family: Chaim, his wife Rozalia, and daughter Pepka. Before the war
the Lorbenfelds lived near the village church; after the Germans killed their son they
went into hiding in the Bar house. After the war they emigrated to the United States;
nothing is known about their further history56.
Jakub Einhorn hid in a number of localities. In Markowa he stayed with Jan and
Weronika Przybylak, and after the war he moved to Szczecin57.
The largest group of Jews lived with the Ulma family. The only residents of
Markowa to suffer the consequences, with which the Germans threatened the Polish
population, the Ulmas were murdered together with those whom they attempted to
rescue.
E. Augustyn, Romek czyli Abraham, www.forum-znak.org.pl; J. Matusz, Parciane portki Michała,
“Rzeczpospolita”, 2–3 April 2005.
56
Accounts – W. Bar, A. Kuźniar.
57
Account – A. Kuźniar. See also note 47.
55
60
Markowa
View of Markowa from the site where in 1942 the Germans shot and buried the Jews from the
Wólka
Medynia
village and itsSmolarzyny
vicinity
Podleśna
Medynia
Łańcucka
Łańcucka
Tajęcina
Czarna
Korniaktów
Północny
main roads Białobrzegi
Wola Dalsza
Dębina
Rogoźnica
other roads
Wola Mała
railways
Smolarzyny
ikówka
Strażów
airport
Łańcut Rudna
towns
Wola Dalsza
Krzemienica
Dębina
Świetoniowa
Nowa Wieś
Głuchów
Korniaktów Kosina
Północny
Wola Mała
Świetoniowa
Trzebownisko
Gorliczyna
Studzian
Palikówka
Grzęska
Kosina
Kraków
Łańcut
Sonina
Rogoźno
MARKOWA
Gać
Baranówka
Kielanówka
Albigowa
Gać
Husów
Staroniwa
Husów
Chodakówka
ŻurawiczkiSłocina
Mikulice
Urzejowice
Górna
Słocina
Niżatyce
Krzeczowice
Kańczuga
Kraczkowa
Maćkówka
Kańczuga
Ostrów
Biała
Boguchwała
Krzeczowice
Rzeszów
Environs ofSieresz
Markowa
Zwięczyca
Urzejowice
Niżatyce
Sieresz
Białoboki
Chodakówka
Wolica
Lipnik
Handzlówka
Mikulice
Dębów
Lipnik
Handzlówka
KrasneŻurawiczki
Przeworsk
Studzian
Wysoka
Krzemienica
Wolica
Nowosielce
MARKOWA
Strażów
Maćkówka
Białoboki
Ostrów
Albigowa Przybyszówka
Wola
Rafałowska
Łąka
Przeworsk
Dębów
Głuchów
Cierpisz
Wola Mała
Gniewczyna
Wysoka
Kraczkowa
Grzęska
Nowosielce
Korniaktów
Południowy
Czarna
Gorliczyna
Łukawiec
Terliczka
Zaczernie
Rogoźno
Sonina
Wielka
villages
Białobrzegi
Gniewczyna
Jasionka
Korniaktów
Południowy
Malawa
Cierpisz
Święty Roch
Albigowa
Wola
Rafałowska
Handzlów
61
Markowa
Smolarzyny
Leżajsk
Leżajsk
Korniaktów
Północny
Wola Dalsza
Dębina
Białobrzegi
Wola Mała
Gniewczyna
Korniaktów
Południowy
Świetoniowa
Grzęska
Głuchów
Rogoźno
Kosina
Łańcut
Gorliczyna
Sonina
Przeworsk
Nowosielce
Przemyśl, Lviv
Studzian
Dębów
Wysoka
MARKOWA
Kańczuga
Gać
Maćkówka
Białoboki
Wolica
Ostrów
Żurawiczki
Mikulice
Albigowa
Lipnik
Handzlówka
Urzejowice
Niżatyce
Krzeczowice
Husów
Sieresz
Chodakówka
Kańczuga
62
Markowa
Wooden windmill
Cottage and farm buildings typical for Markowa at the end of the nineteenth century and the
first half of the twentieth century
Markowa
Roman Catholic church of St. Dorothy, built in Markowa in 1904
63
64
Markowa
Work on improving a side road in a part of Markowa known as “Kazimierz”, the place
of residence of a large part of the local Jewish community
Work on the land
Markowa
Visit paid in Markowa in 1931 by Wincenty Witos – national leader of the Peasant Party,
one of the largest political parties in the country and the most popular in Markowa
Local activists of the peasant movement
65
66
Markowa
Helena Cwynar and her husband, Jan, and son, Zbigniew. During the occupation this
family offered shelter to Abraham Segal (in the upper left corner in the photograph next
page)
67
Markowa
Abraham Segal soon after leaving his
hiding place in 1944
Michał and Maria Bar, who in their home
concealed three members of the Lorbenfeld
family
Janina Bar, who helped her parents,
Józef and Julia, to hide five members
of the Riesenbach family
Stefania, daughter of Michał and Maria Bar,
assisted her parents in concealing Jews
68
Markowa
Jan Przybylak from Markowa (on the left) together with Jakub Einhorn, whom he hid during
the occupation
Markowa
69
The Szylar family from Markowa – sitting from the left: Dorota, Janina and Antoni, standing
from the left: Franciszek, Helena and Eugeniusz – concealed during the occupation
six members of the Jewish Weltz family
70
Jewish children probably murdered by the Germans in Markowa in 1942
Markowa
Markowa
Three Jews from Markowa during the war wearing armbands with the Star of David
71
72
Markowa
Jews from Markowa
at the end of the 1930s
Markowa
73
German functionary with two unidentified
Jews dragged out from their hiding place
Konstanty Kindler – a functionary
of the Blue Police and then the German
gendarmerie – the chief oppressor of the
Jews of Markowa in 1942
German soldier stationing in Markowa in 1941
74
Markowa
Anonymous letter written between 24 March and 27 July 1944 and warning Andrzej Szpytma,
a farmer, against the consequences – similar to those suffered by Józef Ulma – of supposedly
hiding Jews. There are no other traces indicating that he or his son actually provided shelter
to the Jews
THE FATE OF THE ULMA FAMILY
AND THE JEWS CONCEALED BY THEM
Józef Ulma was born in Markowa on 2 March 1900. His parents, Marcin and
Franciszka, born Kluz, were poor farmers, the owners of three hectares of land and
a small wooden house. Józef graduated from a four-grade elementary school, and in
1921 was conscripted to military service. At the age of 29 he enrolled at an agricultural
college, from which he graduated with excellent grades. Subsequently, Józef became
a fervent propagator of vegetable and fruit growing, which at the time was still not
widespread. With less than a hectare of land at his disposal, he used half of it for setting
up a fruit tree nursery, the first of its kind in Markowa. The sale of saplings became
one of the sources of Józef’s income, and it was probably due to his efforts that grafted
apple trees appeared in Markowa. Józef was a pioneer not only in gardening but also
in beekeeping and silkworm breeding.
Józef Ulma’s greatest passion was photography. Benefiting from knowledge gained
from books and periodicals, he was capable of assembling a camera (later on, he became
the owner of professional equipment), and was the author of thousands of photographs.
Many of his works are preserved in private collections belonging to the residents of
Markowa. Ulma portrayed the daily life of the village – work in the fields, weddings,
First Communions and christenings as well as special events – choral, orchestra and
theatrical performances. He received commissions, but many of the works depict his
family. Ulma took photographs upon numerous occasions, frequently at work, and of
himself. As a result we knew what he, and his life, looked like. The likenesses show
a man with a determined personality, interested in the world and in people.
The preserved books from Ulma’s private collection include: O drenowaniu
(Drainage), Podręcznik elektrotechniczny (Electrical Engineering. A Textbook),
Podręcznik fotografii (A Photography Textbook), Wykorzystanie wiatru w gospodarce
(The Use of Wind on the Farm), Radiotechnika dla wszystkich (Radio Engineering
for All), Przyroda i technika (Nature and Technology), Dzicy mieszkańcy Australii
(The Savages of Australia), Atlas geograficzny (Geographical Atlas), Słownik wyrazów
obcych (Dictionary of Foreign Words), and Dzieje biblijne Starego i Nowego Przymierza
(The Biblical Story of the Old and New Covenant). Some feature a stamped ex-libris
with the inscription “Private book collection. Józef Ulma”. Józef also subscribed to the
periodical “Wiedza i Życie”. This variety of titles testifies to wide horizons – spanning
from topical knowledge of use on a farm to information about other countries and
cultures. The contents were put to practical use – apart from a photo camera Józef
Letter by Józef Ulma of 4 March 1935 to the Agricultural Chamber in Lwów, in the collections of the Ulma family.
Collections of the Ulma family.
76
The Fate of the Ulma Family and the Jews Concealed by Them
also built book binding equipment, a radio set, and a small electric windmill for, i.a.
charging an accumulator; consequently, he was the first person in the village to replace
kerosene lamps with electricity.
Józef Ulma found time for social work. He became closely affiliated with two
youth groups active in inter-war Markowa: initially, he was a member of the Catholic
Youth Association (Katolickie Stowarzyszenie Młodzieży), and then the Peasant Youth
Union “Wici” in which he acted as a librarian and a photographer. His participation
in “Wici” antagonised the local parish priest, Władysław Tryczyński, who regarded
this organisation to be leftist and pro-communist. Józef enjoyed many opportunities
for holding talks with members of the Peasant Party and associated activists of the
cooperative movement, including Ignacy Solarz, who was establishing a cooperative
health centre just two plots of land away. For some time Ulma also fulfilled the
function of head of the Markowa Dairy Cooperative.
At the age of 35 Józef married Wiktoria Niemczak, 12 years his junior. Wiktoria was born
in Markowa on 10 December 1912, the seventh child of Jan and Franciszka, born Homa.
The loving and compatible couple soon had numerous offspring. In seven years Wiktoria
gave birth to Stasia, Basia, Władzio, Franuś, Antoś, and Marysia, and only the tragedy
of 1944 prevented them from having a seventh child. Wiktoria kept house and brought
up the children. She also attended courses at the Orkan People’s University in Gać.
When the Ulmas could no longer sustain such a large family on their small farm,
they decided to seek a new life despite strong bonds with Markowa. In 1938 they
bought five hectares of black-earth in Wojsławice near Sokal. Funds for the purchase
came from the sale of their property and small savings. The move, however, never took
place due to the outbreak of the war.
***
The circumstances under which eight Jews appeared in the Ulma household remain
unclear. The incomers were five men named Szall – a father and four sons from Łańcut,
as well as Layka, her sister Gołda (Genia) Goldman, and a little girl, presumably
Layka’s daughter. The most probable time of their reception by Józef Ulma is the
second half of 1942. Józef was celebrated for his kindness towards the Jews – he had
already helped some to find shelter and assisted a family known as the “Ryfkas” to
build a hiding place in local ravines created by streams.
Information about the Goldman family, whose members included the women
staying with the Ulmas, is relatively extensive. The head of the family was Chaim,
a prosperous Jew. Together with his wife, Estera, he owned a several-hectares large farm
and a small shop in Markowa, located at the crossroads leading to Kańczuga, Łańcut
and Przeworsk (house no. 783). The Goldmans had at least four daughters: Layka, who
together with her husband and one or two children, lived with her parents. Gołda, also
[A. Zięba], Solarz Ignacy, Solarz Zofia [in:] Polski słownik biograficzny, vol. 40, fasc. 2, Kraków 2000, pp.
255–262.
Ibidem, p. 462; Account – W. Ulma.
Z. Solarz, Mój pamiętnik, Warszawa 1985, p. 359.
In September 1939 Józef fought in the war. There is no information whether Józef and Wiktoria Ulma had
joined ZWZ-AK or BCh.
Account – W. Ulma.
77
married, stayed in her parents’ home alone since her husband, a commercial agent,
travelled all over Poland; presumably, the couple was childless. At the time of the
greatest danger the younger Goldman daughters were in all probability hiding together
with their parents in the neighbouring village of Zabratówka, where they vanished.
The available information about the Szall family remains fragmentary. The father
of the family was about 70 years old and traded in cattle. He was well known in
Markowa, where he frequently conducted assorted transactions. One of his grown-up
sons, concealed at the Ulmas together with his father and brothers, fought in the Polish
army during the war of 1939.
It would be difficult to determine the Ulmas’ motives for inviting Jews into their
home. With all certainty, the reasons included the commandment to love thy neighbour,
compassion, and the awareness that refusing help could be tantamount to a death sentence
for people deprived of the protection of the law. In 1942 the Ulmas had numerous
opportunities to observe how the Germans shot the local Jews in an adjoining lot – an
animal graveyard. Could there have been other grounds, such as financial gain, in view
of the fact that the large Ulma family was poor? Apparently, the Szalls did not arrive
with considerable funds since earlier they had entrusted their property to someone who
promised to help them. The daughters of Chaim Goldman, who came from a relatively
wealthy home, at least within the context of the prevailing rural conditions, probably
did provide some sort of means, which were then used for sustaining all the members
of the household. A small box containing golden valuables found on the chest of the
murdered Gołda could prove that Ulma did not demand payment.
Retaining the Jews, the Ulmas could have counted on the fact that the joint efforts
of several persons in the prime of their life would make it easier to endure the difficult
wartime period. We know that together with the Jews Ulma tanned the hides, which he
later sold to earn a living. As has been mentioned, the Ulmas had invested the majority
of their pre-war savings in land in Wojsławice.
Despite the considerable distance between houses, the concealment of the Jews did
not go unnoticed for long. The large amounts of food bought by Wiktoria, the tanned
hides, and the frequent visits of persons who came to have their photographs taken for
forged kenkartas soon revealed the secret. On the other hand, the identity of the person
who told the Germans about the hiding Jews, his motives and awareness of the tragic
consequences also for the Polish family, remain an unresolved puzzle. The discovered
although incomplete documents made it possible to reconstruct the circumstances of
the tragedy, which transpired on 24 March 194410.
Before the war and during its onset the Szall family lived in Łańcut. Conscious
of the looming “Final Solution” they started to look for a hiding place. Initially, they
were promised shelter by Włodzimierz Leś, a police constable in Łańcut, born in Biała
near Tyczyn. Similarity to his grandparents, who moved to the region of Rzeszów
from Eastern Galicia, he was regarded as a Ukrainian. Leś lived in the suburbs of
Account – H. Szpytma.
Account – S. Niemczak.
State Archive in Przemyśl, 891, Folios of Stanisław Kojder, folio 6, Reports by “Kożuchowski” for the head
of Intelligence, 25 March 1944, pp. 170–171. Information about the acquaintanceship between Leś and the Szall
family, the attempts made by the Jews to retrieve their property, and the part played by Leś in the expedition
comes from, i.a. an interview with Helena P., Leś’s stepdaughter. She claimed that her stepfather was “such a good
person” that he could not have denounced the Szalls to the Germans.
10
78
Łańcut, near the Szalls, with whom he maintained close contacts before the war, and
now helped to go into hiding in return for material rewards. Once Leś realised that
the Germans not only threatened all those helping the Jews with the death penalty
but actually carried it out, the Szall family was forced to seek safety elsewhere. They
turned to their acquaintances in Markowa, the Ulmas, who welcomed them. Even so,
the Szalls insisted that Leś continue helping them in return for the considerable part of
their property left behind in his hands. Since for quite some time he refused to conform
to their demands, they tried to retrieve their belongings – either by taking them back or
exchanging them for possessions belonging to Leś. Extant documents of the conspiracy
People’s Security Guard suggest that fearing the loss of the Jewish spoils, Leś betrayed
the Szall hiding place to his colleagues from the German gendarmerie. He could have
learned about the location of the shelter from the Jews themselves, with whom he still
had good relations, or from informers11. Absolute certainty came when he decided to
visit Józef Ulma and have a photograph taken by him12.
***
The course of the crime was determined upon the basis of court and control-investigation documents, preserved from the trial of Josef Kokott, one of the
perpetrators13. The court acts include a protocol of the interrogation of an eyewitness, the
horse cart driver Edward Nawojski, who transported the gendarmes to Markowa14.
The Nawojski account reports that just after midnight on 23/24 March at least
eight functionaries: four gendarmes and four–six Blue Police members, left Łańcut.
Lieutenant Eilert Dieken, the commander of the outpost in Łańcut, led the group. The
other gendarmes were Josef Kokott, Michael Dziewulski and Erich Wilde15. The two
identified policemen were Włodzimierz Leś and Eustachy Kolman16.
The carts reached the buildings belonging to Józef Ulma before sunrise. The
Germans left the drivers and the horses at a slight distance and, escorted by the police,
approached the house. Soon several shots could be heard – the first victims, killed in
their sleep, were the two Szall brothers and Gołda Goldman. The remaining executions
were witnessed by the drivers, summoned by the Germans to see the sort of punishment
meted to every Pole for hiding Jews. Nawojski recounts the murder of one of the
Szall men, followed by the deaths of Layka Goldman and a small child, another male
member of the Szall family and, finally, the oldest Szall. In a while Józef and Wiktoria
Ulma were shot in front of the house. A witness recalled: “During the execution we
could hear terrible shouts, wailing, and the children calling out for their parents who
Z dziejów wsi...., p. 441, 444.
State Archive in Przemyśl, 891, Folios of Stanisław Kojder, folio 6, p. 253, no title, [1944], no author; ibidem,
folio 15, Note “Hela”, 1944, pp. 43–44.
13
IPN Archive Branch in Rzeszów, 107/1608, Acts of the trial held at the Voivodeship Court in Rzeszów against
Josef Kokott IV K 126/58, vol. 1–4; IPN Archive, Branch in Rzeszow, 052/317, Control-investigation acts against
Josef Kokott no. 38/56.
14
Josef Kokott IV K 126/58, vol. 1, Protocol of the interrogation of Edward Nawojski, 12 March 1958, l. 158–159;
ibidem, vol. 4, Protocol of the main trial, evidence given by Edward Nawojski, 26 July 1958, l. 61–63.
15
Ibidem, vol. 1, Protocol of the interrogation of Edward Nawojski, 12 March 1958, and Teofil Kielar, 21 March 1958.
16
Ibidem, Protocol of the interrogation of Teofil Kielar, l. 158, 228.
11
12
79
had been already killed. All this produced a shocking sight”17. The gendarmes began
deliberating what to do with the desperately crying children. After conferring with
his colleagues, Dieken decided to shoot the children. Nawojski saw Kokott single-handedly killing three or four of them. The gendarme’s words, addressed to the Polish
drivers, left a deep imprint on their memory: “See how Polish pigs die for concealing
the Jews”. The victims were Stasia, Basia, Władzio, Franuś, Antoś, and Marysia. In
several minutes 16 persons perished at the hands of their executioners.
Teofil Kielar, the earlier summoned sołtys, arrived when the last victims were being
killed. Acting in accordance with an order issued by the Germans, he brought over
several persons to bury the bodies. Since Kielar knew the head of the penal expedition
from the latter’s frequent inspections in Markowa, he asked about the reason for
shooting the children, and heard that the objective was the welfare of the inhabitants of
Markowa: “So that they would have no further problems”.
Having committed the crime, the Germans began to pillage. Kokott turned to
Franciszek Szylar, one of the men ordered to dig a grave, telling him to thoroughly
search the murdered Jews, while he watched and shone a flashlight. When he noticed
a box, concealed on Gołda Goldman’s chest and containing valuables, he declared:
“This is what I needed” and put it in his pocket. Other Germans were busy plundering
the Ulma property. They requisitioned coffers, mattresses, beds, some of the better
vessels, and large supplies of tanned hides. Since the loot did not fit into the carts from
Łańcut, the Germans demanded that two additional ones be supplied from Markowa.
The residents of Markowa, acting under coercion, were ordered to carry the bodies
down from the attic and dig a large hole in the ground. Franciszek Szylar approached
one of the Germans with a request that the Jews and the Catholics be buried separately.
The gendarme reacted with fury and, punishing Szylar for his refusal to immediately
carry out the command and his desire to change it, began shooting at him, piercing
a bucket held by him. Ultimately, the Germans consented to making two graves in
which the murdered Poles and Jews were laid separately18.
While the graves were being made, Dieken, in the company of one of the gendarmes,
went to the Blue Police station in Markowa, just several hundred metres away, where
he reprimanded the chief of police for having permitted the presence of the Jews.
Finally, the execution site was used for a drinking spree. The sołtys was ordered
to bring vodka, and the gendarmes and policemen drank three litres. After the burial
Kokott gathered all the Poles employed for this task and urged them keep it secret: “No
one may know how many persons were shot, only you and I!”19. All the policemen left
Markowa on wagons piled high with the loot. Despite a severe prohibition issued by
the Germans, a week later five men opened the grave of the Ulmas, laid the bodies into
coffins, and reburied them under the cover of the night. One of them stated: “Placing
the body of Wiktoria Ulma into a coffin I discovered that she was pregnant. I base my
finding on the fact that the infant’s head and chest were protruding from her genitals”20.
Soon after the Germans were driven out from Markowa, the bodies of the Ulma family
were transferred to the local cemetery.
Ibidem, Evidence given by Edward Nawojski, l. 780.
Ibidem, Protocol of the interrogation of Franciszek Szylar, 1 March 1958, l. 190.
19
Ibidem, Protocol of the interrogation of Edward Nawojski, 12 March 1958, l. 158.
20
Ibidem, Protocol of the interrogation of Franciszek Szylar, 1 March 1958, l. 190.
17
18
80
Wedding of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma in 1935
81
82
Józef and Wiktoria Ulma
House of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma in Markowa
Wiktoria Ulma and her children, from the left: Władzio, Stasia holding Marysia, Franuś
on a sheepskin, Basia and Antoś
83
84
Wiktoria Ulma
Józef Ulma
85
86
Christening of the Ulma children
87
88
Wiktoria Ulma and her children
The Ulma children
89
90
The Ulma children
91
92
The Ulma children
93
94
Four Szall brothers in the Ulma’s farmstead, where they went into hiding (photograph of their
father, who was also hiding in the Ulma’s farm, p. 40)
95
96
Parish acts (libri mortuorum), registering the death of the Ulmas
Justice and memory
Once the German occupants were ejected, the inhabitants of Markowa wished
to rapidly join the reconstruction of the country and the village. Their great hopes
connected with Stanisław Mikołajczyk, the leader of the opposition and the former
prime minister of the government of the Republic of Poland in exile, who came to
Poland in an attempt to win power in democratic elections, proved unfounded. The
Red Army did not withdraw from the country after the hostilities ended. Part of the
pre-war territory became annexed by the USSR, while Polish communists, brought
over from Moscow, were instated in the remaining lands and the eastern terrains of the
Reich incorporated into Poland. Having illegally seized provisional power in 1944, by
1947 they were capable of falsifying the elections to the Sejm (Parliament). Until 1956
the repressive dimension of the resultant Stalinist system was comparable only to the
German occupation. After that, communist dictatorship prevailed in Poland to 1989.
Post-war Poland embarked upon penalising the perpetrators of wartime crimes. Not
all the criminals could be tried simply because their names and places of residence were
unknown. Consequently, only some of those guilty of the crime committed against the
Ulma, Szall and Goldman families were punished. On 10 September 1944, soon after
armed hostilities in the Subcarpathian region came to an end, the Underground armed
forces carried out a death sentence on Włodzimierz Leś – the eager functionary of the
Blue Police. Other policemen assisting at the time of the Markowa murders remained
unidentified. A few gendarmes were tried: the commander of the expedition, Leutnant
Eilert Dieken, evaded just punishment. When during the 1960s evidence against him
had been collected in the Federal Republic of Germany it became apparent that he was
no longer alive. The further fate of Michael Dziewulski and Erich Wilde could not be
established. The only criminal to be tried was Josef Kokott, accidentally recognised
in 1957 by the residents of the region of Rzeszów on a stay in Czechoslovakia. Soon,
upon the request of the Polish administration of justice, he was extradited to Poland.
The trial took place at the Voivodeship Court in Rzeszów in July and August 1958,
proving numerous individual and group crimes, in particular against the Jews living
in Łańcut and the surrounding area. The defendant did not confess to the majority
of the crimes, including the one involving the Ulmas and the Goldman and Szall
families. True, he admitted to having been part of a group of gendarmes who came
to Markowa to murder the Jews, but only to keep watch over the cart drivers and not
“It follows from the acts of the Prosecutor’s Office at the Land Court in Dortmund 54 Js 7/67 that Dieken is
no longer alive” (S. Zabierowski, Zarys struktury organizacyjnej i obsady stanowisk kierowniczych placówek
żandarmerii niemieckiej we wschodniej części Dystryktu Krakowskiego w latach 1939 do 1945 [in:] Studia nad
okupacją hitlerowską południowo-wschodniej części Polski, vol. 1, ed. S. Zabierowski, Rzeszów 1976, p. 38).
Josef Kokott IV K 126/58, vol. 2, Explanations by the suspect Josef Kokott, l. 114–115.
98
Justice and Memory
to shoot anyone. With eyewitness testimony at its disposal, the court refused to give
credence; on 30 August 1958 it pronounced Kokott guilty and sentenced him to death.
Upon the accused’s appeal, the Council of State of the People’s Republic of Poland
(Rada Państwa PRL) pardoned Kokott and changed the verdict to life imprisonment.
Subsequently, due to a change of the regulations, the sentence was reduced to a term
of 25 years. The files of the Kokott case show that he was born in 1921 in Koblowo, in
the Czech Sudeten Mountains, and that after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia
he received German citizenship and enlisted in the army and the gendarmerie. From
January 1941 Kokott served in the gendarmerie in Łańcut. After the war, he resided in
Czechoslovakia. He died in Bytom on 16 February 1980, two years before the expiry
of his sentence.
***
The residents of Markowa remembered the Ulma family, although not much was
said publicly, nor was any mention made of the local Jewish population – neither those
who had died nor the survivors. The young people of the village knew very little. Since
the 1990s recollections about the murdered Jews and those who risked their lives to
rescue their Jewish neighbours are being slowly revived. The same is true of the Jewish
side. It is difficult to assert whether the reason for the revival lay in the toppling of the
Iron Curtain. Undeniably, this breakthrough marked the renewal or intensification of
contacts between the Polish villagers and those who survived and went abroad. For the
first time the rescued decided to come to Poland.
In 1995 Abraham Segal learned about the complicated heart surgery awaiting him.
After more than forty years he resolved to return to the place where he went into
hiding. “I do not have to see Naples, but I must once again see Łańcut and Markowa”.
He did not manage to meet those to whom he owed the most – Jan and Helena Cwynar,
but paid a visit to their daughters, who during the war were his peers. Similarly, in
2000 Joseph Riesenbach and his family travelled to Markowa to see Janina Bar, whose
parents were a year earlier posthumously acknowledged as Righteous among the
Nations. The same honour was bestowed on Janina.
In 1994 the Weltz family invited Helena Kielar to their home in New York. There, she
was cordially welcomed by her hosts, whose motion led to a presentation of the Righteous
among the Nations medals to Helena, her sister, and no longer living parents.
Since a petition for a medal for the Ulma family could not be submitted by even
a single survivor, in 1993 it was filed to Yad Vashem through the intermediary of
Stanisław Niemczak – a nephew of the murdered Wiktoria Ulma. “They perished because
they offered shelter and opened their home to eight Jews whom Nazi law deprived of
protection. They paid the highest price of laying down their lives and those of their
children. Such deeds can not be forgotten and must be rendered indelible in order to prove
that apart from evil there exists also much that is good. Justice should be not merely done
Ibidem, vol. 4, Abbreviated death certificate of Josef Kokott, l. 339.
E. Augustyn, Romek czyli Abraham, www.znak.org.pl (20 April 2004).
J. Riesenbach, The Story of the Survival of the Riesenbach Family, www.riesenbach.com.
M. Szpytma, J. Szarek, Sprawiedliwi wśród Narodów Świata. Przejmująca historia polskiej rodziny, która
poświęciła swoje życie ratując Żydów, Kraków 2007, p. 65.
Justice and Memory
99
but also perceived”. In 1995 the Yad Vashem Institute posthumously honoured Józef
and Wiktoria Ulma with a Righteous among the Nations of the World medal.
Soon, the Catholic Church too noticed the Ulmas’ heroism. A beatification process
was inaugurated in 2003 after several years of preparations conducted by the diocese
of Przemyśl. Witness testimony and an analysis of documents confirmed not only the
courageous stand of the Ulma family but also the fact that it lived according to strictly
observed rules of the Gospel. On a national level the process ended on 25 April 2008.
Now the Congregation for the Causes of Saints at the Roman Curia will consider the
beatification. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the secretary of state of the Vatican, mentioned
the Ulmas during a promotion of Martin Gilbert’s book about the Righteous among the
Nations, which took place in Rome in January 2007.
Memory of the Ulmas, and thus of all the other families, who provided shelter for
Jews in hiding as well as of the Jewish minority, which before the war comprised an
inseparable part of the Subcarpathian population, was expressed in, i.a. the foundation
of a monument commemorating the tragic events and carrying a message addressed
to the world. The monument was unveiled on 24 March 2004, upon the sixtieth
anniversary of the crime. A stone plaque features the following inscription: “Saving
the lives of others they sacrificed their own lives. Józef Ulma, his wife, Wiktoria,
and their children: Stasia, Basia, Władziu, Franuś, Antoś, Marysia, and an unborn
infant. Concealing eight older brothers in the faith, Jews of the Szall and Goldman
families, they died together with them in Markowa on 24 March 1944 at the hands of
the German gendarmerie. May their sacrifice be a call for respect and love due to all.
They were the sons and daughters of this land, and remain in our hearts. The people of
Markowa, 24 March 2004”.
Abraham Segal, who came from Israel, attended the celebrations. Facing the
gathered crowds, he thanked the Poles for rescuing Jews, including himself. He also
addressed words of gratitude to persons present at the ceremony, including Archbishop
Józef Michalik – the metropolitan bishop of Przemyśl and chairman of the Conference
of the Episcopate of Poland. That day, the national media for the first time told the
story of the Ulma family and the Jews sheltered by them (i.a. on the evening news).
The account was also widely reported by the press, including foreign publications.
Two books and six documentary films appeared in the 2004–2008 period.
In 2006 the self-government authorities in Markowa, together with the local
residents, teachers and school children, decided to give the primary school and
gymnasium in Markowa the name of the Servants of God the Ulma Family. The
ceremony was attended by Kazimierz Michał Ujazdowski, minister of culture and
national heritage, Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka, minister from the Chancellery of the
President, Janusz Kurtyka, chairman of the Institute of National Remembrance,
Archbishop Józef Michalik, David Peleg, the Ambassador of Israel to Poland, and
Agnieszka Magdziak-Miszewska, the future Ambassador of Poland to Israel. Several
score Israeli school students from Jerusalem also witnessed the event.
The minister of culture and national heritage and the chairman of the Institute
of National Remembrance signed a declaration entitled Świadkowie historii (The
Motion by Stanisław Niemczak, Łańcut, 22 October 1993, copy in the collections of the author.
“L’Osservatore Romano”, 26 January 2007.
100
Justice and Memory
Witnesses of History): “Today, gathered in Markowa, we recall the Ulma family,
murdered 62 years ago by the Germans for concealing Poles of Jewish descent. This
was one of those magnificent, heroic Polish families, which suffered the highest penalty
for help rendered to the Jews during the German occupation. The Ulma family has been
included amongst the ‘Righteous among the Nations’ and their beatification process
has been inaugurated. When we learn about the fate and deeds of concrete persons,
we see particularly vividly the complicated and dramatic history of Poland in the past
century. Very often we are unaware that authentic witnesses of the twentieth-century
history of Poland, the tragic events of the Second World War or the period of communist
subjugation still live right next to us. The merciless passage of time is the reason why
from year to year their number becomes increasingly smaller. Not only accounts by the
witnesses of breakthrough events familiar from the pages of history textbooks, but also
the fate of such people as the inhabitants of Markowa deserve to be recorded”.
Since 2004 the residents of Markowa are not the only persons to gather under the
Ulma monument, which is also the destination of tours by numerous visitors from the
whole of Poland and abroad. The largest group are Israeli students (sometimes as many
as more than ten coaches a day) coming to Poland to take part in the March of the
Living, and to tour the synagogue in nearby Łańcut and the grave in Leżajsk of the
world famous tsaddik Elimelech, active during the eighteenth century in the present day
region of Subcarpathia. Other coaches bring over Jewish youth from the USA.
The idea of constructing a museum in Markowa devoted to Poles rescuing the Jews,
the first of its sort in Poland, emerged in 2007. The project won the support of local self-government authorities – the Sejmik of the Subcarpathian voivodeship. The planned
institution will depict the fate of the Jewish community during the Second World War,
and will be adapted to the needs of foreign visitors (descriptions will be available not
only in Polish but also in English and Hebrew). The museum will possess facilities for
organising lessons about the Holocaust and the Polish rescuers of the Jews10.
On 27 January 2008 the Institute of National Remembrance opened an exhibition
entitled “Righteous Among the Nations. Help of Polish people for the Jewish population
in Małopolska Province in the years 1939–1945” to mark the International Day of
Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, held in the Main Market
Square in Kraków, with special attention devoted to Subcarpathia, including Markowa
and the Ulma family. Numerous representatives of the world of science, the state and
self-government authorities attended the event. Once again, Abraham Segal arrived
from Israel to take part11.
M. Szpytma, J. Szarek, Sprawiedliwi wśród Narodów Świata..., p. 84.
Resolution passed by the Sejmik of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship, 30 June 2008, www.wrota.podkarpackie.
pl/res/bip/uchwaly/umwp/sejmik/08/cze/XXIII_390_08_resolut.rtf.
11
A large part of the exhibition was presented in a book accompanying the display: Sprawiedliwi wśród Narodów
Świata. Pomoc Polaków dla ludności żydowskiej w Małopolsce w latach 1939–1945. Righteous among the
Nations. Help of Polish People for the Jewish Population in Małopolska Province in the Years 1939–1945.
Rzeszów 2008.
10
Justice and memory
Material from the court trial of Josef Kokott – his photograph and a document confirming
service in the German gendarmerie
101
102
Justice and Memory
Plaque in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem with the names of the inhabitants
of Markowa awarded the Righteous among the Nations medal
Justice and Memory
103
Abraham Segal at the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem in front of a plaque with the names
of Subcarpathian localities, including Markowa, where the Germans murdered the Jewish
communities
104
Justice and Memory
Letter from Yad Vashem informing about the commemoration of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma;
next page: an honorary diploma and a Righteous among the Nations medal
Justice and Memory
105
106
Justice and Memory
Sealed acts of the completed beatification process of the Ulma family at the diocesan level
Justice and Memory
Picture of the Servants of God the Ulma Family – persons whose beatification
process has been initiated are entitled to such a picture. On the reverse: a prayer for
beatification in return for sacrificing their “life in order to rescue the repressed Jews”
107
108
Ulma family grave at the cemetery in Markowa
Justice and Memory
Justice and Memory
Monument commemorating the Ulmas in Markowa
109
110
Justice and Memory
Unveiling a monument commemorating the Ulma family, 24 March 2004, and a meeting
between Abraham Segal, who during the occupation hid in Markowa, and his wife, Hana,
with Archbishop Józef Michalik, chairman of the Conference of the Polish Episcopate
Justice and Memory
111
Visit paid on 23 March 2006 by secondary school students from Jerusalem upon the occasion
of granting the primary and secondary schools in Markowa the name of the Servants of God
the Ulma Family
112
Justice and Memory
Granting the primary and secondary schools in Markowa the name of the Servants of God
the Ulma Family
Justice and Memory
113
On 23 March 2006 Ph.D Kazimierz Michał Ujazdowski, minister of culture and the national
heritage, and Prof. Janusz Kurtyka, president of the Institute of National Remembrance,
signed in Markowa the “Witnesses of History” document – a declaration of a willingness to
collect and popularize accounts of events resembling those which took place in Markowa
On 27 January 2008 the exhibition “Righteous among the Nations. Help of Polish People for
the Jewish Population in Małopolska Province in the Years 1939–1945” was opened in the
Main Market Square in Kraków
114
Justice and Memory
Document of 10 December 1969 – the Weltz family sign over land to Antoni Szylar, who
together with his relatives offered them shelter at his home
Helena Kielar,
born Szylar (on the
right), on a visit in
New York, where
she stayed with
Aron Weltz and his
daughter, Sarah
Justice and Memory
115
Abraham Segal during a meeting with Michał Skrobacz near his parents grave (top
photograph) and Czesława Lonc, born Cwynar, and her family (bottom photograph; from right
Segal’s wife Hana)

Sprawiedliwi B5.indd

Transcription

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