Markowa
Encyclopedia
Village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...
in Łańcut County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship
Subcarpathian Voivodeship
Podkarpackie Voivodeship , or Subcarpathian Voivodeship, is a voivodeship, or province, in extreme-southeastern Poland. Its administrative capital and largest city is Rzeszów...
, in south-eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina
Gmina
The gmina is the principal unit of administrative division of Poland at its lowest uniform level. It is often translated as "commune" or "municipality." As of 2010 there were 2,479 gminas throughout the country...
(administrative district) called Gmina Markowa
Gmina Markowa
Gmina Markowa is a rural gmina in Łańcut County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland. Its seat is the village of Markowa, which lies approximately south-east of Łańcut and east of the regional capital Rzeszów....
. It lies approximately 8 kilometres (5 mi) south-east of Łańcut and 22 km (14 mi) east of the regional capital Rzeszów
Rzeszów
Rzeszów is a city in southeastern Poland with a population of 179,455 in 2010. It is located on both sides of the Wisłok River, in the heartland of the Sandomierska Valley...
. The village has a population of 4,100; it was fundated in 14th by the descendants of Germans colonists, as village Markhof.
Saving Jews in WWII
During World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
many families in the village hid their Jewish neighbours to help them survive the Holocaust. It is now estimated that at least 17 Jews survived the war in Markowa.
On March 24, 1944 a patrol of German police came to the house of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma
Józef and Wiktoria Ulma
Józef and Wiktoria Ulma, a Polish husband and wife, living in Markowa near Rzeszów in south-eastern Poland during the Nazi German occupation in World War II, were the Righteous who attempted to rescue Polish Jewish families by hiding them in their own home during the Holocaust...
, where they found 8 Jews belonging to the Szall and Goldman families. At first the Germans executed all the Jews. Then they shot the pregnant Wiktoria and her husband. When the six children began to scream at the sight of their parents' bodies, Joseph Kokott, a German police officer (Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
from Sudetenland
Sudetenland
Sudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia being within Czechoslovakia.The...
), shot them. The other killers were Eilert Dieken, Michael Dziewulski and Erich Wilde.
On the 60th anniversary of this tragedy, a memorial was erected in memory of the family.
External links
- Story of the survival of the Riesenbach family
- Gisele Hildebrandt, Otto Adamski. Dorfimfersuchungen in dem alten deutsch-ukrainischen Grenzbereich von Landshuf. 1943. KrakówKrakówKraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
. Markowa