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The report of the Polish midwife from Auschwitz
It is necessary to know and transmit generations to this never proiskhodilo.Stanislava Leszczynski, a midwife in Poland for two years prior to January 26, 1945 stayed in the Auschwitz concentration camp, and only in 1965 he wrote this report.
"Of the thirty-five years of midwife two years I spent as a prisoner of the women's concentration camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, while continuing to perform their professional duties. Among the huge number of women are delivered there was a lot of pregnant women.
Options midwife I was doing there, alternately in the three barracks , which were built of boards with multiple slots progryzennyh rats. Inside the barracks on both sides of towering three-story bunks. Each of them had to put three or four women - on the dirty straw mattresses. It was tough, because the straw dust has long worn off, and the sick woman lay almost bare boards, moreover, is not smooth, and with knots, waft 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, harassed cold, painful, piercing, especially in winter, when the roof hung long icicles.
About necessary for the mother and the child the water, I had to take care of herself, but to bring one bucket of water, it was necessary to spend at least twenty minutes.
In these circumstances, the fate of women giving birth has been abysmal, and the role of midwives - extraordinarily difficult: no aseptic means no dressings. At first, I was left to itself: in cases of complications, requiring the intervention of a specialist, for example, the separation of the placenta manually, I had to act itself. German camp physicians - Rhode, Koenig and Mengele - can not "tarnish" their calling a doctor, helping the representatives of other nationalities , therefore, appeal to their help, I had no right.
Later, I enjoyed a few times using a Polish woman doctor Irene certainly worked in a nearby office. And when I myself became ill with typhus, a great help to me had a doctor Irena Byaluvna, carefully take care of me and my patients.
The work of doctors in Auschwitz will not mention, because what I observed, exceeds my ability to express in words the greatness of calling the doctor and heroic accomplishment. The feat of the doctors and their dedication etched in the hearts of those who have never had it can not tell because they were martyred in captivity. Doctor in Auschwitz fought for the life of those sentenced to death, giving his own life. It had before it a few packs of aspirin and a huge heart. There's not a doctor working for the glory, honor, and meet professional ambitions. For him there was only the duty doctor - to save lives in any situation.
Number of home births exceeded 3000. Despite the unbearable filth, worms, rats, infectious diseases, lack of water and other horrors that can not be told, there happened something extraordinary.
Once an SS doctor ordered me to draw up a report on the contamination in the process of birth and deaths among mothers and newborn babies. 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 advanced clinics of German universities can not boast such a success. In his eyes I read anger and jealousy. Perhaps the limit exhaustion were too useless food for bacteria.
A woman getting ready to leave, had a long time to deny yourself the bread ration for which could get myself sheet. This sheet tore it into pieces, which could serve as diapers for the baby.
Washing diapers caused many difficulties, especially because of the strict prohibition to leave the barracks, as well as inability to freely do anything inside it. The washing diapers dried mothers own body.
Until May 1943, all children born in the Auschwitz camp, brutally sacrificed: they were drowned in a barrel. It did the nurse Clara Pfann. The first was a midwife by profession and came to the camp for infanticide. Therefore, she was deprived of the right to work in their specialty. She was instructed to do something for which she was more suitable. Also, she was entrusted with the position of the leading elders of the barracks. To help it has been put 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 their child, thrown out of the barracks and tearing rats.
In May 1943, the situation changed some children. The 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 remained with his mother, motherhood itself was a ray of hope. Separation was terrible.
Jewish children continued to sink with ruthless brutality. There was no question of a Jewish child to hide or conceal it among non-Jewish children. Clara and Pfann alternately closely monitor Jewish women during childbirth. The child's birth number tattooed mother 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 becomes thin like a parchment, it shone through the tendons, blood vessels and bones. The longest-held 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 guerrillas. As soon as she had a baby, someone shouted from the protection of its number (prisoners in the camp caused by the numbers). I went to explain her situation, but it did not help, but only caused anger. I realized that her call to the crematorium. She wrapped the baby in a dirty paper and hugged to her chest ... Her lips moved silently, - apparently, she wanted to sing a baby song, as it is sometimes made mother, singing to their babies lullaby to soothe them in the painful cold, hunger and mitigate their bitter lot.
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's hard to say - the experience of the death of an infant dying in front of his mother, or the mother's death, which remains in the minds of her live baby adrift.
Among these nightmarish memories in my mind flashed a thought, a leitmotif. All the children were born alive. Their goal was the life! survive the camp almost 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 died of hunger and cold (these are approximate figures do not include the period up to the end of April 1943).
I still have not had the opportunity to convey their Health Service maternity report from Auschwitz. I give it now in the name of those who can not say anything about the evils of the world, causing them, in the name of the mother and child.
If in my homeland, in spite of the sad experience of war, it may be the trend, against life, then I hope the voice of midwives, all of these mothers and fathers, all decent citizens in protecting the lives and rights of the child.
in a concentration camp, all children - contrary to expectations - were born alive, beautiful, plump. Nature opposes hatred and fought for their rights persist, finding unknown life reserves. Nature is the teacher of an obstetrician. He, along with the nature of fighting for his life, and with it proclaims the wonderful thing in the world - the smile of the child & quot;.
Stanislaw Leszczynski Monument in the Church of St. Anne near Warsaw.
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