Born in 1896, Stanislawa Leszczynska was a married woman with two sons and a daughter. She was also a midwife who worked in the poorest districts of the city of Lodz.

At that time babies were usually born at home, and Stanislawa often walked miles to a delivery and not infrequently was up all night. According to her children, she loved her work and never complained.

During World War II, in 1943—I believe her husband was in the Resistance—she and her three children were arrested. Her sons were sent to labor camps in Germany, and she and her daughter to Auschwitz where she spent two years in a non-Jewish sector of the camp.

Stanislawa let it be known that she was a midwife, and she was assigned to what they called “the sick ward.”

This consisted of a 40-meter long bare wooden barracks with a single large brick stove, which was seldom lit. Three layers of bunks lined two walls. Since the barracks were located in a low-lying area, the floor was often flooded with 2 or 3 inches of water.

The thirty bunks nearest the stove constituted the so-called “maternity ward.”

Sickness abounded—dysentery, typhoid, etc.—as well as vermin, lice, and rats.

The diet consisted of boiled rotten greens and bread. There was no running water, no antiseptics, no dressings, and except for a few aspirins, no medicine.

The unlit stove was often used as the delivery table. And in order to obtain a sheet to make diapers and a bit of covering for the baby, a woman had to give up her bread ration for a time—a great sacrifice for an already famished woman.

Until 1943 all the babies born at Auschwitz were immediately drowned in a barrel. Before Stanislawa arrived, this was done by a German midwife, known as Sister Klara, who had been imprisoned for the crime of infanticide.

Stanislawa refused to murder the babies, and though she was beaten for this, she stood her ground.

After 1943, this policy changed slightly and some blond, blue-eyed babies were sent to a center for adoption by German parents or to an orphanage.

Stanislawa made every effort to support and encourage her patients. Often she would get them to pray together.

And even though she knew most of the children would not live more than a few weeks or months due to malnutrition and the unhealthy conditions of the camp, she lavished her love on them.

Stanislawa claimed every child for Jesus and his Kingdom. When a baby was born, one of the first things she would do was to baptize it.

Maria Oyrzynska, one of the mothers who survived, years later spoke about a time when she had assisted Stanislawa with a delivery. (They all called Stanislawa “Mother.”)

“Mother took the baby lovingly,” she said, “wrapped it in paper and a blanket, and said, ‘Now the most important thing. We shall baptize the child.’ And she did.”

Maria continued “I was the godmother, and I took my responsibility seriously and looked after Adam. He lived relatively long—a whole three weeks.”

When a baby was scheduled to be sent for adoption, Stanislawa tattooed a sign on the child in some obscure way, so that the mother, if she survived the camp, would eventually be able to identify and claim it. This brought some hope and consolation to the bereaved mother.

“For weeks Mother never had a chance to lie down,” Maria Saloman said. “Sitting with a patient, she would sometimes doze for a few minutes, but soon she would jump up and go to one of the moaning women.”

“When Mrs. Leszcynska first approached me,” said another, “I somehow knew everything would be all right. I do not know why, but this was so.

“My baby managed to last three months in the camp, but seemed doomed to die of starvation because I had no milk. Mother somehow found two women to wet nurse my baby, an Estonian and a Russian. To this day I do not know at what price she did this. My daughter owes her life to Stanislawa Leszczynska. I cannot think of her without tears in my eyes.”

Above all things, it was Stanislawa’s faith that sustained her, and this she always tried to impart to others.

Maria Saloman said, “Before making a delivery, Stanislawa made the Sign of the Cross and prayed. She whispered a prayer in which she sought not only help and hope, but strength to sustain her. She worked for us alone, day after day, night after night, without a moment’s rest, with out a replacement.”

A woman physician, Elzbieta Pawlowska, also a prisoner in the camp, said, “Stanislawa was able to organize her prayers in such a manner that she got others to participate. We would sit on the bunks. Mother would start some prayer and then we would sing.

“We sang very quietly. It was not possible otherwise, but all was peaceful. There was an atmosphere she was able to create. Russian women from nearby wards sometimes joined us.”

During the course of her imprisonment, Stanislawa delivered over 3,000 babies, all of which were born alive. Under the conditions of the camp, this was an amazing thing that the Nazi authorities found impossible to explain. However, of those who were not adopted, barely thirty survived.

After the war, Stanislawa returned to her job in Lodz. Though her husband had died, all her children had survived.

Apparently she never talked about her great service in the camp. She never considered what she did as heroic or unusual. Instead she talked about and praised the heroic efforts and compassion of the imprisoned physicians with whom she worked.

It was her son, who, on the 35th anniversary of her work as midwife, did interviews and complied testimonies from her fellow camp survivors, and put them together into a collection called Maternal Love of Life: Texts About Stanislawa Leszczynska.

This remarkable woman embodied for me the words of Catherine Doherty: to “do ordinary things extraordinarily well for love of God.”

She simply continued doing in the camp what she had always been doing in a less visible way. There her heroic presence and fidelity to the “duty of the moment” brought comfort and hope to so many around her.

So often the “glory” of our own efforts to surrender to our “duty” is totally hidden from our eyes. But here is a blazing example of the light one human being can cast in the midst of great darkness.

See also:

Midwife at Auschwitz By Matthew M. Anger

Report from Auschwitz, Stanislawa Leszczynska.

Link to Stanislawa Foundation: http://www.stanislawa.org/index.html