A beatification Mass service has been held in Poland for a Catholic family murdered by Nazis for hiding Jews during World War Two.
Poland’s president and more than 30,000 pilgrims attended the outdoor service, led by Pope Francis’ envoy.
This was the first time an entire family has been beatified, a great honour and a step towards sainthood.
They were executed in 1944 with the Jews they sheltered in south-eastern Poland, after they were betrayed.
In late 1942, motivated by their Christian values, farmers Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma and their six young children – Stanislawa, Barbara, Maria, Wladyslaw, Franciszek and Antoni – hid eight Jews in their farmhouse in the village of Markowa
Saul Goldman, 70, was hiding with his sons Baruch, Mechel, Joachim and Mojzesz. Also there was Golda Grunfeld and her sister Lea Didner with her daughter Reszla, according to Poland’s state Institute of National Remembrance.
Unlike in Nazi-occupied western Europe, the penalty for aiding Jews in occupied Poland was summary execution.
In 1944 a Polish police officer is thought to have betrayed the family by informing the Nazis of their secret.
German gendarmes shot the Jews hiding in the attic and then took the Ulma family outside, shooting Jozef and Wiktoria, who was seven months pregnant at the time, in front of their young children – the oldest was eight, the youngest 18 months. The children were then shot dead.
Several months later, members of the Polish underground resistance executed the police officer who is believed to have denounced the family.
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Sunday’s outdoor Mass was led by Pope Francis’ envoy, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro.
Speaking at the Vatican, the Pope described the Ulmas as a “ray of light” in the darkness of the war and asked the crowd in St Peter’s Square to give the family a round of applause.
The Pope’s speech was broadcast live to the ceremony in Markowa.
In an address at the end, President Andrzej Duda thanked Pope Francis for the “extraordinary” beatification of the whole family.
“Thank you for showing the historical truth about those times, about the fate of Poles under the German occupation. The death penalty was intended to instil terror,” he said.
In 1995, Israel’s Yad Vashem awarded Jozef and Wiktoria with the title “Righteous Among the Nations”, and in 2003 the beatification process was launched.
Beatification is a stage in the Roman Catholic Church towards canonisation or sainthood. Those beatified are declared “blessed” and worthy of public veneration.
In 1939, Poland was home to Europe’s largest Jewish community and more Poles (over 7,000) have been honoured by Israel for helping Jews during the war than any other nationality.
At the same time, under the extreme brutality of the Nazi occupation, many Poles denounced Jews or took part in their murders.
Some six million of Poland’s citizens were killed during the war – half of them were Jews.
Leading members of the Polish government, including Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, attended the Mass.
The government has been accused of trying to rewrite history by exclusively focusing on Polish suffering at the hands of the Nazis and the aid Poles provided to their Jewish neighbours during the war.
It has been accused of trying to stifle historical research into cases of Poles who committed crimes against the country’s Jewish population.