This must be known and passed on to generations so that this never happens again.
Monument to Stanislaw Leszczynska in St. Anne's Church near Warsaw
Stanislava Leszczynska, a midwife from Poland, remained in the Auschwitz camp for two years until January 26, 1945, and only in 1965 wrote this report.
“Out of thirty-five years of working as a midwife, I spent two years as a prisoner of the women's concentration camp Auschwitz-Brzezinka, continuing to fulfill my professional duty. Among the huge number of women who were transported there, there were many pregnant women.
I performed the functions of a midwife there in turn in three barracks, which were built of planks with many cracks, gnawed by rats. Inside the barracks there were three-story bunks on both sides. Each of them was supposed to fit three or four women - on dirty straw mattresses. It was harsh, because the straw had long since been rubbed into dust, and the sick women lay on almost bare boards, moreover not smooth, but with knots that rubbed their bodies and bones.
In the middle, along the hut, stretched a brick oven with fireboxes at the edges. She was the only place for giving birth, since there was no other structure for this purpose. The stove was heated only a few times a year. Therefore, I was pestered by the cold, painful, piercing, especially in winter, when long icicles hung from the roof.
I had to take care of the water necessary for the woman in labor and the baby myself, but in order to bring one bucket of water, I had to spend at least twenty minutes.
In these conditions, the fate of women in labor was deplorable, and the role of a midwife was unusually difficult: no aseptic means, no dressings. At first I was left on my own: in cases of complications requiring the intervention of a specialist doctor, for example, when removing the placenta manually, I had to act on my own. German camp doctors - Rode, Koenig and Mengele - could not "tarnish" their vocation as a doctor by providing assistance to representatives of other nationalities, so I had no right to appeal for their help.
Later, I several times used the help of a Polish woman doctor, Irena Konechna, who worked in a neighboring department. And when I fell ill with typhus myself, the doctor Irena Bialuvna, who carefully looked after me and my patients, gave me great help.
I will not mention the work of doctors in Auschwitz, because what I have observed exceeds my ability to express in words the greatness of the calling of a doctor and a heroically fulfilled duty. The feat of doctors and their dedication were etched in the hearts of those who will never be able to tell about it, because they were martyred in captivity. The doctor at Auschwitz fought for the lives of those sentenced to death, giving his own life. He had only a few packs of aspirin and a huge heart at his disposal. There the doctor did not work for the sake of fame, honor, or the satisfaction of professional ambitions. For him, there was only a doctor's duty - to save life in any situation.
The number of births I received exceeded 3000. Despite the unbearable dirt, worms, rats, infectious diseases, lack of water and other horrors that cannot be conveyed, something extraordinary was happening there.
One day, an SS doctor ordered me to file a report on infections during childbirth and deaths among mothers and newborns. I replied that I had not a single death among mothers or children. The doctor looked at me in disbelief. He said that even the improved clinics of German universities cannot boast of such success. I read anger and envy in his eyes. Perhaps emaciated organisms were too useless food for bacteria.
A woman preparing for childbirth had to deny herself a ration of bread for a long time, for which she could get herself a sheet. She tore this sheet into rags that could serve as diapers for the baby.
Washing the diapers caused many difficulties, especially because of the strict prohibition to leave the barrack, as well as the impossibility to freely do anything inside it. The washed diapers of a woman in labor were dried on her own body.
Until May 1943, all children born in the Auschwitz camp were brutally killed: they were drowned in a barrel. This was done by nurses Klara and Pfani. The first was a midwife by profession and ended up in a camp for infanticide. Therefore, she was deprived of the right to work in her specialty. She was instructed to do what she was more fit for. She was also entrusted with the leadership position of the headman of the barrack. German street girl Pfani was assigned to help her. After each birth, a loud gurgle and splash of water could be heard from the room of these women to the women in labor. Shortly thereafter, the woman in labor could see the body of her child, thrown out of the barracks and torn apart by rats.
In May 1943, the situation of some children changed. Blue-eyed and fair-haired children were taken from their mothers and sent to Germany for the purpose of denationalization. The piercing crying of mothers saw off the taken away babies. As long as the child remained with the mother, motherhood itself was a ray of hope. The separation was terrible.
Jewish children continued to be drowned with merciless cruelty. There was no question of hiding a Jewish child or hiding him among non-Jewish children. Clara and Pfani alternately watched Jewish women closely during childbirth. The born child was tattooed with the mother's number, drowned in a barrel and thrown out of the barracks.
The fate of the rest of the children was even worse: they died a slow death from starvation. Their skin became thin, like parchment, through which tendons, blood vessels and bones showed through. Soviet children clung to life the longest - about 50% of the prisoners were from the Soviet Union.
Among the many tragedies experienced there, I remember the story of a woman from Vilna who was sent to Auschwitz to help the partisans. Immediately after she gave birth to a child, someone from the guard called out her number (prisoners in the camp were called by numbers). I went to explain her situation, but it didn’t help, it only provoked anger. I realized that she was being summoned to the crematorium. She wrapped the baby in dirty paper and pressed it to her breast … Her lips moved silently - apparently, she wanted to sing a song to the baby, as mothers sometimes did, singing lullabies to their babies to comfort them in the agonizing cold and hunger and soften their bitter lot.
But this woman did not have the strength … she could not utter a sound - only large tears flowed from under her eyelids, flowed down her unusually pale cheeks, falling on the head of the little condemned man. What was more tragic, it is difficult to say - the experience of the death of a baby dying in front of the mother, or the death of a mother, in whose consciousness her living child remains, abandoned to the mercy of fate.
Among these nightmarish memories, one thought flashes in my mind, one leitmotif. All children were born alive. Their goal was life! Hardly thirty of them survived the camp. Several hundred children were taken to Germany for denationalization, over 1500 were drowned by Klara and Pfani, over 1000 children died of hunger and cold (these estimates do not include the period until the end of April 1943).
Until now, I have not had the opportunity to submit my obstetric report from Auschwitz to the Health Service. I am passing it on now in the name of those who cannot say anything to the world about the harm done to them, in the name of mother and child.
If in my Fatherland, despite the sad experience of the war, tendencies directed against life may arise, then I hope for the voice of all midwives, all real mothers and fathers, all decent citizens in defense of the life and rights of the child.
In the concentration camp, all children - contrary to expectations - were born alive, beautiful, plump. Nature, opposing hatred, fought for its rights stubbornly, finding unknown reserves of life. Nature is the teacher of the midwife. He, together with nature, fights for life and together with her proclaims the most beautiful thing in the world - the smile of a child."
