MOTHER OF AUSCHWITZ

 

BL. STANISLAWA LESZCZYNSKA was a Polish midwife who was incarcerated at Auschwitz during World War II, where she delivered over 3,000 children. 

 She was born to a Polish Catholic family of carpenter Jan Zambrzycki and his wife Henryka, in the Bałuty neighborhood of Lodz in the Vistula Land under the Tsarist rule. Her father was drafted into the imperial army when she was a child, and sent to Turkestan. To make ends meet, her mother worked 12-hour shifts at the Poznański factory; her earnings allowed Stanisława to go to a private school where classes were in Polish.

 Upon her father's return to Poland, the family left for Brazil in 1908 seeking greater economic opportunity, staying in Rio de Janeiro, but returned after two years. Stanisława completed high-school in 1914, just as the First World War broke out. Her father was drafted again. She stayed with her mother and two younger brothers.

 In 1916 Stanisława married printer Bronisław Leszczyński.  She gave birth to son Bronisław in 1917, and two years later, daughter Sylwia. In 1920 the family relocated to Warsaw. Stanisława enrolled at the midwife college and completed her studies with an Alumnae Achievement Award in 1922. They moved back to Łódź. She got a job as a midwife, and in the same year gave birth to her second son Stanisław. In 1923 her third son, Henryk, was born.

 After the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany at the onset of World War II, the Leszczyński family was forced to relocate to Wspólna 3 Street when the Łódź Ghetto was created for the Jews by the Nazi occupation administration. Żurawia Street, where they used to live, became part of the ghetto area. 

The Leszczyńskis began helping the Jews in gettos by delivering food items and false documents. However, Stanisława was caught and brought to the Gestapo on February 18, 1943. Her younger children, Sylwia, Stanisław, and Henryk were also arrested. Her husband and son Bronisław managed to avoid capture and fled the city. 

The Nazis sent the two boys as slave labor to the stone quarries of Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp.  Stanisława never saw her husband again; he died in the Warsaw Uprising.

 After interrogation by the Gestapo, Stanisława and her 24-year-old daughter Sylwia were transported to Auschwitz concentration camp on April 17, 1943, and tattooed with the camp numbers 41335 and 41336 respectively. Stanisława was relegated to women's camp infirmary along with her daughter, who had been a medical student before the war broke out. Stanisława met Dr Mengele, and was advised to write reports about birth problems and diseases in childbirth.

When Stanislawa heard what was expected of her in the macabre maternity ward, she refused. When she was taken to the doctor who oversaw the entire camp, she again refused. “Why they did not kill her then, no one knows,” said Stanisława’s son Bronislaw in 1988.

Despite threats and beatings, Stanisława  simply began caring for mothers and delivering their babies. Despite knowing that most babies she delivered would be killed within a few hours, she worked to save as many of the mothers’ lives as she could.

It was almost impossible work—no running water, few blankets, no diapers, little food. She quickly learned to have women in labor lie on the rarely lit brick stove in the center of the barracks—the only place that could accommodate a laboring woman. Lice and diseases were common in the “hospital,” which would fill with inches of water when it rained.

Years later, she described how she put her life at risk to save newborns in a work called Raport położnej z Oświęcimia (The Report of a Midwife from Auschwitz). In this record she mentions the meeting with Mengele who requested from her a report about childbed fever cases and cases of death during the accouchements. She also described how the newborns were snatched away, taken to another room, and drowned in a barrel by Schwester Klara, who was imprisoned at Auschwitz for infanticide, and her assistant, Schwester Pfani. 

Stanisława and her assistants did their best to tattoo the babies who were taken in the hopes they would later be identified and reunited with their mothers. Other women killed their babies themselves rather than hand them over to the Nazis.

Of the 3,000 she delivered, some 2,500 newborns perished; a few hundred others with blue eyes were sent away to be Aryanized. Only about 30 infants survived in the care of their mothers. Expectant mothers did not realize what was going to happen to their babies and many traded their meager rations for fabric to be used for diapers after the birth. Stanisława remained the camp's midwife until it was liberated on January 26, 1945. 

Stanisława felt helpless as she watched the babies she delivered be murdered or starve to death, their mothers forbidden to breastfeed. But she kept on working, baptizing Christian babies and caring as best as she could for the women in the barracks. They nicknamed her “Mother.”

In early 1945, the Nazis forced most inmates of Auschwitz to leave the camp on a “death march” to other camps. Stanisława refused to depart, and stayed in the camp until its liberation.

Bl.  Stanisława’s legacy lived on long after the liberation of Auschwitz—both in the memories of the survivors whose babies she attempted to give a dignified birth, the lives of the few children who left the camp alive, and the work of her own children, all of whom survived the war and became physicians themselves.

“To this day I do not know at what price [she delivered my baby],” said Maria Saloman, whose baby Stanisława  delivered, in the 1980s. “My Liz owes her life to Stanislawa Leszczyńska. I cannot think of her without tears coming to my eyes.”

 Stanisława returned to Łódź, and her children also arrived there from the forced labor camps. She settled in an apartment and continued working as a midwife locally.  

Remembering Auschwitz, she prayed over every child she delivered. On January 27, 1970  Bl .Stanisława attended an official celebration in Warsaw, where she met the women prisoners of Auschwitz and their grown-up children who had been born in the camp. She died four years later.

Several hospitals and organizations in Poland are named after Bl. Stanisława; the main road at Auschwitz concentration camp museum is named after her and so is a street in the city of Łódź. In 1983 the School of Obstetricians in Kraków was named in her honor.

Her feast day is May 8.