Stanisława Leszczyńska was a Polish nurse, who assisted 3,000 births at the hell of Nazi German Auschwitz death camp. To her patients, she was known as “Mother” or “The Angel of Life” who saved thousands of people and children who could reach back to their parents after the end of the war.
During the Great War, Stanisława Leszczyńska became a volunteer, helping the poor. In 1916, she married Bronisław Leszczyński; they had four children. In the 1920s, she graduated from a midwifery school.
She was a midwife for 40 years.
“Maybe that’s why I had so many patients that I sometimes had to work three days without sleep. I worked with a prayer on my lips, and I never had an unpleasant accident during my entire career,” she later recalled.
Her dedication to saving Jewish lives during the war was connected to her upbringing and pre-war life in Łódź. Before the war, her flat at 7 Żurawia Street in Łódź was located in the neighbourhood of a Jewish religious school, and a synagogue, so it was natural that she had daily relations with the followers of Judaism, who, according to 1921 data, accounted for 34.5 per cent of the city’s population.
During the World War 2, the male part of her family belonged to the National Armed Forces. The entire family was arrested in February 1943. The father and his sons were sent to the German concentration camp Gross-Rosen, and Stanisława and her mother to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
She was assigned to a medical service subordinate to the criminal Josef Mengele, a doctor who performed brutal pseudo-medical experiments on selected groups of prisoners, including those selected to be killed in the gas chambers.
Leszczyńska was able to stand up to him. In a place where every newborn child was treated as if it were dead, Stanisława saved thousands of human lives at the risk of her own life. Before each birth, she prayed. Stanislawa secretly attended the births of female prisoners and provided care for the newborns, helping to keep them alive.
She assisted around 3,000 births. None of the babies died during delivery, but only thirty of them survived until the camp was liberated. She delivered her last baby on a day when the Germans were already fleeing, in a burning barracks.
The blue-eyed children were usually taken by the Germans to be raised by German families. Leszczyńska created small tattoos for those children so their mothers could find them.
Leszczyńska died on 11 March 1974, at the age of 78, in Łódź. Her beatification process started in 1992.
In 1996, on the 100th anniversary of her birth, her remains were laid to rest in the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Łódź.
Source: Dzieje.pl, IPN
Photo: IPN
Tomasz Modrzejewski
