The report of the Polish midwife from Auschwitz

• The report of the Polish midwife from Auschwitz

It is necessary to know and transmit generations to this never happened.

Stanislas Leszczynski, the midwife from Poland, for two years prior to January 26, 1945 stayed in the Auschwitz concentration camp, and only in 1965, wrote this report.

"Of the thirty-five years of midwife two years I spent as a prisoner of the women's concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, while continuing to perform their professional duties. Among the huge number of women are delivered there was a lot of pregnant women.

midwives function I was doing there, alternately in the three barracks, which were built of boards with a plurality of slits, progryzennyh rats. Inside the barracks on both sides of towering three-story bunks. On each of them had to put three or four women - on the dirty straw mattresses. It was tough, because the straw has long worn off in the dust, and the sick woman lay almost bare boards, besides not smooth, and with knots, rub with the body and bones.

In the middle, along the barracks, stretched oven, built of brick, with furnaces at the edges. It was the only place for the confinement, as other facilities for this purpose was not. Stoked oven a few times a year. Therefore I am pestering cold, painful, piercing, especially in winter, when hung from the roof long icicles.

About necessary for the mother and baby water I had to take care of itself, but to bring one bucket of water, it was necessary to spend at least twenty minutes.

In these circumstances, the fate of women in childbirth was deplorable, and the role of the midwife - extraordinarily difficult: no aseptic means, no dressings. At first, I was left to itself: in cases of complications, requiring the intervention of a specialist, such as placenta manually, I had to act itself. German camp doctors - Rhode, Koenig and Mengele - could not "tarnish" his doctor's vocation, assisting representatives of other nationalities, so appeal to their help, I had no right. Later, I used a few times using a Polish woman doctor Irene certainly worked in a nearby office. And when I was very sick with typhus, a great help to me he had a doctor Irena Byaluvna, carefully take care of me and my patients.

The work will not mention doctors at Auschwitz, as what I have observed, exceeds my ability to express in words the greatness of calling the doctor and heroic accomplishment. Feat doctors and their dedication engraved in the hearts of those who have never been on this will not be able to tell because they were martyred in captivity. Doctor in Auschwitz fought for the life of those sentenced to death, giving his own life. He had at his disposal only a few packs of aspirin and a huge heart. There, the doctor worked not for glory, honor, or to satisfy professional ambitions. For him there was only the doctor's duty - to save lives in any situation.

Number of births exceeded my 3000. Despite the unbearable dirt, worms, rats, infectious diseases, lack of water and other horrors that can not be transferred, there happened something extraordinary.

Once an SS doctor ordered me to make a report about infections during birth and deaths among mothers and newborn children. I replied that I did not have a single death or mothers or children. The doctor looked at me with disbelief. He said that even the advanced German university clinics can not boast such a success. In his eyes, I read anger and jealousy. Perhaps to limit exhaustion were too worthless food for bacteria. A woman getting ready to leave, had to long time to deny yourself the rations of bread, for which she could get yourself a sheet. This sheet is torn into shreds, which could serve as diapers for the baby.

washable diapers caused a lot of difficulties, especially because of the strict prohibition to leave the barracks, as well as the inability to freely do anything inside of it. Laundered diapers mothers dried on his own body.

Until May 1943, all children born in the Auschwitz camp, brutal way sacrificed: they drowned in a barrel. It did the nurse Clara and Pfann. The first was a midwife by profession and came to the camp for infanticide. Therefore, she was denied the right to work in their specialty. She was instructed to do that for which it was more suitable. it has also been entrusted with the leadership position of mayor of the barracks. To help her has been put in charge of the German moll Pfann. After each delivery of the room the women before childbirth could hear the loud gurgling and splashing water. Shortly thereafter, a woman in labor could see the body of her child, thrown out of the barracks and tearing rats.

In May 1943, the situation changed some children. Blue-eyed and fair-haired children taken away from their mothers and sent to Germany for the purpose of denationalization. The shrill cries of mothers accompanied uvozimyh kids. While the child remain with his mother, motherhood itself was a ray of hope. Separation was terrible.

Jewish children continued to sink with merciless cruelty. There was no question of a Jewish child to hide or hide among non-Jewish children. Clara and Pfann alternately closely followed the Hebrew women in childbirth. Child born mother tattooed number, drowned in a barrel and thrown out of the barracks. The fate of the rest of the children was even worse: they were dying a slow death from starvation. Their skin became thin, like parchment, it shone through the tendons, blood vessels and bones. The longest kept for the life of Soviet children - from the Soviet Union was about 50% of female prisoners.

Among the many tragedies there experienced particularly vividly remember my story of a woman from Vilna, sent to Auschwitz for helping the partisans. Immediately after, she gave birth to a child, some of the guards shouted her number (prisoners in the camp caused by the numbers). I went on to explain her situation, but it did not help, but only caused anger. I realized that she was summoned to the crematorium. She wrapped the baby in a dirty paper and pressed it to his chest ... Her lips moved silently, - apparently, she wanted to sing a baby song, as it sometimes did his mother singing lullabies to their babies to comfort them in the painful cold and hunger and mitigate their bitter share.

But this woman had no strength ... she could not make a sound - only large tears flowed from under the eyelids, trickled down her unusually pale cheeks, falling on the head of a small sentenced. What was more tragic, it is difficult to say - the experience of the infant's death, dying at the front of his mother, or his mother's death, which remains in the minds of her living child adrift.

Among these nightmarish memories in my mind flashed a thought, a leitmotif. All the children were born alive. Their goal was the life! It survived the camp barely thirty of them. Several hundred children were taken to Germany for denationalization, more than 1,500 were drowned by Clara and Pfann, more than 1,000 children die of hunger and cold (these are approximate figures do not include the period until the end of April 1943). I still have not had the opportunity to convey your Health Service maternity report from Auschwitz. I give it now in the name of those who have nothing to say to the world of the harm caused to them, in the name of the mother and child.

If in my homeland, in spite of the sad experience of the war, there may be tendencies directed against the life, I hope to have the voice of all midwives, all of these mothers and fathers, all decent citizens in defense of life and the rights of the child.

In a concentration camp, all children - contrary to expectations - were born alive, beautiful, chubby. Nature opposes hatred, fought hard for their rights, finding unknown life reserves. Nature is a teacher obstetrician. He, along with the nature of fighting for his life, and with it proclaims the glorious thing in the world - the smile of the child ".