24 March | National Day of Remembrance of Poles Who Saved Jews Under German Occupation - Instytut Pileckiego

In 2018, the President of the Republic of Poland established 24 March as the National Day of Remembrance of Poles Who Saved Jews Under German Occupation. It serves as a commemoration of all Polish citizens who risked their lives to help Jews during the German occupation.

The Preamble to the Act establishing the National Day states: in tribute to Polish Citizens – heroes, who, in an act of heroic courage, unbelievable valor, compassion and interhuman solidarity, faithful to the highest ethical values, the precepts of Christian mercy and the ethos of the sovereign Republic of Poland, saved their Jewish neighbors from the Holocaust planned and carried out by the German occupiers (text of the Act – click).

The 82nd Anniversary of the Death of the Ulma Family

24 March was chosen for the National Day as a direct reference to the tragic deaths of the Ulma family and the Jews whom they were hiding in Markowa in the Podkarpacie region.

On that day in 1944, as a result of a denunciation, German gendarmes murdered Józef Ulma, his pregnant wife Wiktoria, their children (eight-year-old Stanisława, six-year-old Barbara, five-year-old Władysław, four-year-old Franciszek, three-year-old Antoni and one-and-a-half-year-old Maria), and the eight Jews whom they were hiding. The latter were Saul Goldman, his four sons (Baruch, Mechel, Joachim and Moses; the family were called the “Szallami” from their father’s name), Gołda (Genia) Grünfeld, Lea (Layca) Didner, and Reszla, the daughter of one of the women.

The Ulmas were probably informed on by Włodzimierz Leś, a “Blue Policeman” from Łańcut, who had initially helped Saul Goldman’s family for money.

In 1995, the Yad Vashem Institute posthumously honored Józef and Wiktoria Ulma with the title of Righteous Among the Nations. On 10 September 2023, by a decree of Pope Francis, the Ulmas and their children were declared Blessed of the Catholic Church.

The life of a Pole who hides a Jew is not an easy one. Terror is rampant in the country […]. The noblest and most devoted individuals, those who form the best part of society, are deported en masse to concentration camps or prisons. Spying and denouncing flourish in the country, thanks in no small part to the large number of both actual and false Volksdeutschers [...]. A Jew in the apartment of an intellectual, a worker or a man of the people is like a stick of dynamite, that can explode at any moment and blow up the entire apartment […]. – thus wrote E. Ringelblum (“Stosunki polsko-żydowskie w czasie drugiej wojny światowej. Pisma z bunkra”, compiled by T. Epsztein).

Repressions for Helping Jews in Occupied Poland

– When considering the issue of providing assistance to Jews during the German occupation of Poland, it is worth taking into consideration factors that were intended to discourage the Christian population from granting any aid to Jews, comments Dr. Joanna Nikel from the Pilecki Institute’s Department of Research into Nazism and the German Occupation During the Second World War. – In occupied Poland, the Germans created a system in which they rewarded evil and punished good, while the mass provision of assistance was impossible due to the ubiquitous terror and repressions. The German occupiers sought to antagonize society and separate the Christian and Jewish communities. This objective was served by demoralizing material incentives, aggressive anti-Jewish propaganda, and, finally, the death penalty for those who gave any support to Jews, introduced by Hans Frank’s decree of 15 October 1941 (the “Third Regulation Restricting the Possibility of Residence in the General Government”). The elaborate German legal system not only criminalized helping Jews, but also imposed the obligation to denounce those who provided such assistance. As the war continued, punishments for aiding Jews in the occupied Polish territories became steadily harsher, Dr. Nikel says.

In none of the occupied countries did the Germans apply such far-reaching repressions and such cruel terror for help shown to the Jewish population as in Poland”, she observes.

– Without taking into account the aspect of German legislation, which penalized the granting of aid to Jews in occupied Poland, with a simultaneous presentation of this issue in the context of occupied Western Europe, a factual and honest discussion of Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust is not possible, she continues.

Restoring the Memory of the Rescuers

As Dr. Nikel adds, the memory of these people remains an important part of the mission of the Pilecki Institute, which conducts research into the experience of the German occupation in Central and Eastern Europe, documents the fate of the victims of totalitarianism, and restores the memory of those who were able to preserve their humanity in the face of criminal political systems. – The “Called by Name” program is one example of these activities, as it restores the memory of Poles murdered by the Germans for the provision of help to Jews. Commemorating the rescuers does not reduce history to simplistic narratives. On the contrary: it is part of a broader research and educational effort undertaken by the staff of the Pilecki Institute to show the complicated realities of the German occupation and the dramatic choices faced by people who lived in a world of terror, adds Dr. Joanna Nikel.