Markowa in the Podkarpacie region. Here, on the night of 23/24 March 1944, an unimaginable tragedy of innocent people took place. That day the Germans were literally masters of life and death. Dawn had not yet risen when the German gendarmes surrounded the farm of Józef and Wiktoria Ulma. The orders were given by Lieutenant Eilert Dieken - head of the gendarmerie post in nearby Łańcut. He was assisted by four other Germans: Josef Kokott, Michael Dziewulski, Gustaw Unbehend and Erich Wilde.

A number of the so-called blue policemen (officers of the Polnische Polizei im Generalgouvernement, a formation created by the Germans in which Poles served) also turned up at the Ulmas’ home. It all started with one of them – Włodzimierz Leś. He was the one who most likely informed the Germans about the Ulmas…

First, the Germans killed eight Jews - members of the Szal and Goldman families, including a mother and a small child. Then it was the turn of the Poles. The perpetrators led the large family outside the buildings. The first to die from a bullet was Józef Ulma, the family’s 44-year-old breadwinner. The Germans also shot the farmer’s wife, Wiktoria, who was 12 years younger. At the time of her death she was in the last month of her pregnancy.

There was a moment of pause as the executioners did not know what to do with the children of the murdered couple. But Dieken quickly dispelled their doubts and ordered them to shoot. In short intervals the Germans killed 8-year-old Stanisława, 6-year-old Barbara, 5-year-old Władysław, 4-year-old Franciszek, 3-year-old Antoni. The youngest victim - Maria - was just 1.5 years old…

- Watch how Polish pigs who hide Jews are being killed! - exclaimed gendarme Josef Kokott, clearly enjoying himself at the massacre of the Poles who gave shelter to Jewish people in need. He himself murdered several children in cold blood.

When it was over, the executioners organised a party with alcohol. Then they robbed the corpses and… just drove off. - “That’s just what I needed,” chuckled Kokott, taking the valuables found next to Golda Goldman’s corpse.

Constable Leś - according to the account of the commander of the Peasant Battalions, Stanisław Kojder “Hel” - stole the jacket of the murdered Józef Ulma. Six months later he was dead - killed by the Polish underground.

But the German oppressors were doing well. With one exception. Private Kokott was found by accident while living in Czechoslovakia after the war. In 1958, he was extradited to Poland and tried in Rzeszów. The media called him “the devil from Łańcut”. Kokott never admitted to killing the Ulma children. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and then to a quarter of a century in prison. However, he did not live to see freedom. He died in 1980, after serving 22 years.

Meanwhile, the man who, on 24 March 1944, decided about the life and death of the Ulma, Szal and Goldman families, after the war… climbed the career ladder. He was… a law enforcement officer - a police inspector in Esens, West Germany. He died peacefully in his home fifteen years after the war, with a sense of impunity for the crimes he had committed. It seemed that he would take the secret of his past to the grave. His family and friends still lived in ignorance for a long time.

And then came the year 2013. The construction of the Museum of Poles Saving Jews has already begun in Markowa, with the Ulma Family as its patrons. The initiator of the establishment of the museum was Mateusz Szpytma, PhD - currently vice-president of the Institute of National Remembrance. He became interested in a letter that Greta Wilbers, Dieken’s daughter, who was unaware of her father’s real past, had sent to the Castle Museum in Łańcut.

“I am the daughter of the late Eilert Dieken. I know from his letters that he was on duty in Łańcut during the war. I am happy as I also know that he has done a lot of good for people. Anyway, I wouldn’t have expected anything else,” stressed the daughter of the man who on 24 March 1944 in Markowa ordered the killing of a total of 16 people - the entire Ulma family and the Jews they were hiding, members of the Goldman, Didner and Gruenfeld families.

Wilbers, unaware of these crimes, wrote the letter in response to earlier correspondence signed by the management of the Łańcut museum and sent to Esens through Szpytma.

The historian, who had been researching the fate of the Ulma family and their torturers for years, informed the local police station at the time that the Museum of Poles Saving Jews was under construction in Markowa. He also asked for information about Dieken. We don’t know how, but the letter sent from Poland also ended up in the hands of the criminal’s daughter. She even offered to include her father’s memorabilia in the museum’s exhibition. She was convinced that he had helped people during the war.

In 2013, in response to, among other things, her letter, Szpytma travelled to Germany. He met Wilbers and handed her an envelope with a piece of paper on which he had written down the facts of Dieken’s wartime past.

The truth was brutal: a respected citizen, helpful neighbour and loving father murdered innocent people in cold blood during the war.