A Catholic Polish midwife who delivered 3,000 babies at Auschwitz remembered 75 years after camp's liberation
- This month marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp where an estimated 1.1 million people were killed during the Holocaust.
- But Auschwitz was also where 3,000 babies were born, thanks to the courageous work of Stanislawa Leszczyńska, a Polish Catholic midwife who was imprisoned for helping Jewish people in Lodz, Poland.
- On arriving to Auschwitz, visibly pregnant women and children were sent to die in the gas chambers. Babies who were born in the camp were often drowned or killed by lethal injection.
- Leszczyńska's story is being turned into a documentary called, Położna (The Midwife), which was written and directed by her great-niece Maria Stachurska.
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This month marked 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a concentration camp where an estimated 1.1 million people were murdered. But it was also where 3,000 babies were born because of the brave work of a Stanislawa Leszczyńska, a Polish Catholic midwife.
Leszczyńska's story isn't well known outside of Poland. But her great niece, Maria Stachurska, hopes to bring more attention to it through a documentary she's directing about Leszczyńska's life called, Położna (The Midwife).
Over the course of five years at Auschwitz, established in Poland in 1940 during World War II, prisoners — who were primarily Jews — were subjected to forced labor, torture, and executions. Part of the coordinated effort to annihlate Jewish people included forced sterilization. Visibly pregnant women and children were sent to die in gas chambers when they arrived to the camp, and women were forbidden from getting pregnant.
Many pregnant women underwent secret abortions to avoid getting killed. Babies who were born in Auschwitz were often murdered by drowning or lethal injection.
But when Polish Catholic midwife Stanislawa Leszczyńska arrived at the camp in 1943, imprisoned for secretly aiding Jews in the Polish town of Lodz, she tried to fight back against those practices and help new mothers as much as she could.
A Polish Catholic midwife delivered 3,000 babies in Auschwitz under squalid conditions
Leszczyńska first wrote of how she delivered 3,000 babies during her two years at the camp in a 1957 paper submitted to a midwives' event in Lodz. There were no complications related to childbirth for any of the mothers or babies Leszczyńska attended to, according to her account. The Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland estimates that at least 700 children were born at the camp.
Of the babies that Leszczyńska said that she delivered, half were drowned, another 1,000 died soon after birth from starvation or hypothermia. In total, 530 babies survived, but 500 who had "Aryan characteristics" were sent to live with other families in Germany, according to a 2011 paper published in the Journal of Medical Biography, which discussed Leszczyńska's work in Auschwitz.
In an effort to console mothers whose children were sent to other families, Leszczyńska secretly tattooed the babies with an identifying symbol, so they could have a chance of reuniting with their children in the future.
Leszczyńska did her best to improve conditions for pregnant women, but they remained inhumane.
New mothers traded their paltry rations to get basic necessities for their babies
When the time for delivery was close, expectant mothers had to gave up their meager bread rations so that they could get a sheet that would be used to make diapers and clothing for the child, according to a 2005 article published in the Seattle Catholic, an outlet for Catholic news and opinions.
The experience was terrifying and dehumanizing, but also "the most extraordinary," Leszczyńska described in her report because the mothers were still able to enjoy fleeting moments of happiness.
"For as long as the mother had her baby with her, the very fact of maternity itself was a ray of hope for her," Leszczyńska wrote, "but parting with the baby was terrible."
Leszczyńska stood up to Dr. Josef Mengele, notorious for conducting horrifying experiments on prisoners
In addition to delivering babies, Leszczyńska is also remembered for standing up to Dr. Josef Mengele, who performed horrifying experiments on prisoners. That included removing organs from living subjects without anesthesia. Mengele had also instructed all newborns to be murdered. But Leszczyńska refused.
Mengele sentenced newborns and children to death because he said he saw no other option.
"I can't set the child free because there are no longer any Jews who live in freedom. I can't let the child stay in the camp because there are no facilities," Mengele said, according to Holocaust expert David Patterson. "It would not be humanitarian to send a child to the ovens without permitting the mother to be there to witness the child's death."
For unknown reasons, Leszczyńska was not dismissed from her position at the hospital.
Even though helping Jewish people was what sent her to Auschwitz in the first place, Leszczyńska continued her noble and dangerous work.
Leszczyńska was sent to Auschwitz for bringing food and documents to Jewish people
When the Nazis invaded Lodz, Poland in 1939, its Jewish population was forced into a ghetto, cramped and unsanitary living quarters. Leszczyńska, who worked as a midwife, soon began smuggling false documents and food to Jews inside. In 1943, she was caught and sent to Auschwitz.
Leszczyńska was sent to work in the camp's "maternity ward," which was made up of the 30 bunks closest to the stove, on which women gave birth. An average of four babies were born every day. The room was frigid and infested with rats. There was no medication available and the baby's cord was tied with a piece of cloth.
After the camp was liberated, Leszczyńska returned home and resumed working as a midwife in Lodz. Leszczyńska died in 1974 and was nominated for sainthood in the Catholic Church.
Stachurska, Leszczyńska's great niece, said the midwife wouldn't even say anything against the Nazis who sent her to Auschwitz and subjected prisoners to unspeakable horrors.
"I felt compelled to make this film," Stachurska, Leszczyńska's great niece, told the First News of her documentary. "She had the right to speak out about her oppressors because she witnessed their bestiality. Yet, she did not. She never said anything against them."
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