Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in the Podkarpacie Region
The results of the competition will be announced until November 19th, 2010. The Museum in Markowa will be built in 2013.
The resolution concerning the creation of a museum devoted to Poles saving Jews in the Podkarpacie region during the Second World War was passed by the regional council of the Podkarpackie province in June 2008.
Its justification reads: “In view of the stereotypes that exist in Poland and – especially – abroad, connected with Polish-Jewish relations during the Second World War, there is a necessity of presenting facts, mostly unknown, showing the positive manifestations of Polish-Jewish relations”.
In 2004 a monument was unveiled, commemorating the tragic history of the Ulma family. In Autumn 1942 Józef Ulma and his wife Wiktoria née Niemczak, living with their six children, were asked for help by the Jewish Szall family – a father who was cattle merchant before the war, and his four sons.
The Ulmas took them in. Shortly after that they also gave shelter to Gołda Goldman and her sister Lajka with her daughter.
A Blue Policeman, Włodzimierz Leś, denounced the Ulmas. On March 24th, 1944 German soldiers murdered the eight Jews and the Poles who were hiding them: Józef Ulma, his wife, who was in the last month of her pregnancy, and their six children: Staś, Basia, Władzio, Franuś, Antoś and Marysia. The oldest of them was 8 years old.
Józef and Wiktoria Ulma were honored with the title of the Righteous Among the Nations in 1985. More about the Ulma family
The Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in the Podkarpacie Region will be located near the monument commemorating the dramatic events that took place in Markowa during the Second World War.
The Museum will be a modern institution, using the newest multimedia technologies. The interactivity of the exposition will be a crucial factor, as well as a meticulous reconstruction of the realities of the time of the Second World War.
In the building of the future Museum – apart from a showroom, a research office and a lecture hall in which film screenings will be organized – the Ulmas house will be reconstructed. It is possible thanks to the fact that about 800 photographs taken by Józef Ulma have survived the war: they depict the interior of the house.
More about the competition for the museum project on the website of the Łańcut Castle Museum.
