The Midwife of Auschwitz

“Bartek crumpled against a pillar, his head in his hands, and now it was Ana’s turn to wrap an arm around his waist and guide him out with the rest.

‘What did I say?’ He moaned. ‘It was horrible, horrible!’

‘It was bold and brave and it saved the lives of all these people,’ Ana told him.”

Bartek, Ana’s husband and a Polish Christian, steps forward when SS soldiers interrupt a Jewish wedding taking place in a synagogue. He pretends to agree with the Nazis’ intent of destroying any Jewish holy place and suggests to the SS that they herd the attendees into the street to force them to watch their synagogue as the Germans destroy it. Afterward, Bartek feels wracked with guilt over his suggestion, though Ana points out that convincing the Nazis to drive the attendees into the street saved the lives of all those in the building.

“So many babies seemed to insist on coming out at night. Someone had told her once that it was the body’s way of making sure it delivered the baby before the household duties of the day kicked in, which sounded about right. Sometimes, dearly as she loved Him, Ana wished God had been a woman, then pregnancy might have been better organized.”

An evening knock on their front door typically means that Ana must go to deliver a baby, many of whom are born at night. Her comment here is a subtle dig at the notion of God as a man, and therefore not completely in touch with the experience of women. When Nazis enter their house and say their family must relocate to the now empty homes of sequestered Jews, the Germans too express the misogynistic belief that Ana, a skilled medical provider, cannot understand their genetic insights into the inferiority of Jews because she is a woman. This so infuriates Ana that Bartek must calm her to prevent the Nazis from harming her.

“‘They are shutting you in?’

‘“Sealing the ghetto,” yes. You will not see Jews dirtying the streets of Litzmannstadt any more.’

They both winced at Litzmannstadt. The Germans had renamed Łơdź after some German military hero and were slowly removing any traces of the Polish language from the city. It was unpleasant but not nearly as terrible as removing any traces of its Jewish inhabitants.”

This conversation between Ana, outside the Jewish ghetto, and Ester, inside and speaking to Ana through a chain-link fence, occurs nine months after the Germans invaded Poland. Elements of the ultimate aims of the Nazis are evident in the changes they have already instituted: Jews are completely isolated in the ghetto, and conversations between those on either side of the fence may result in SS officers shooting the speakers. The Nazis have eliminated virtually all vestiges of outward Jewish life, particularly interactions with non-Jewish citizens, as they force more Jews from smaller communities into the ghetto. The Germans also remove traditional Polish names of streets, buildings, and other locales. Simply mentioning the former, Polish name of a street can result in execution. The actions of the Germans demonstrate The Human Capacity to Commit Atrocities.

“The carol drifting up from the street below Ana’s apartment was being sung in German but still sounded beautiful. […] These were not Nazis but normal German people who had been making their life peacefully in Łơdź before the soldiers had marched in and told them that they were superior to everyone else. Who didn’t want to hear that?

It didn’t mean she forgave them though. […] Even as they sang their songs of peace, they were quite happy to be on the right side of a war that was going to deliver the world to them no matter what it cost anyone else.”

Ana Stuart expresses the observations of Ana frequently throughout the narrative as a means of noting the ways that the war alters the perceptions of those living through it. Here, Ana fights her feelings of resentment toward the ethnic Germans who resided in Poland prior to the invasion. Now, they benefit from Nazis sharing wealth they stole from Polish citizens, and they buy into the notion that Germans are a superior race. This is part of the ongoing religious struggle Ana experiences: She never questions her deep Catholic beliefs but struggles with the actions of others who call themselves Christians and often questions God’s intent. Frequently, her moments of religious questioning result in divine responses, highlighting the theme of The Presence of God in The Face of Powerlessness.

“I, the elder of the Jews, have seen your struggle for space and am glad to report that I have found a solution. Very soon there will be opportunities for people to leave Litzmannstadt and move to camps in the countryside. The Germans have told me of one of they are calling Auschwitz where there is more space, cleaner air and wholesome outdoor work. […]

The first trains will leave in two days’ time. Report to the central offices tomorrow to reserve your place. First come first served.”

This is part of a speech made by Rumkowski, the Jewish leader appointed by the Nazis as their spokesman and the ghetto mayor. His words here are haunting in that he is inviting Jews to leave the overcrowded, disease-ridden, poverty-stricken ghetto to go instead to a supposedly bucolic work camp. The danger of accepting this offer is clear, in that Auschwitz remains notorious as the deadliest of the Nazi concentration camps. Though the Nazis tried to conceal the execution of the Jews transported there, soon ghetto residents quit volunteering to relocate to Auschwitz. The Nazis responded with regular sweeps of the ghetto in which they rounded up elderly, sick, and frail citizens, loaded them into cattle cars, and shipped them to camp. This again highlights The Human Capacity to Commit Atrocities.

“‘Gas vans at Chelmno’ the headline screamed and went on to describe, with eyewitness reports and grainy photographs, how Jews sent on the transports out of Litzmannstadt were being herded into sealed vans and gassed with carbon monoxide from the engines. […]

This, then, was why God had brought her into his sacred cathedral—not to find peace, but purpose. She thought of all the Jews in the ghetto, putting their hands up to go and farm for the Reich and finding themselves herded to their deaths.”

Throughout the narrative, Ana experiences several revelatory moments of enlightenment and inspiration. Here, spiritually struggling with the atrocities she observes around Łơdź, she goes to the cathedral to ask God for peace of mind. Angry because she does not receive the sought-after serenity, Ana encounters a group of young Poles whom she guesses to be members of the Polish Resistance. They show her an underground newspaper that describes the true purpose of the concentration camps. She finds this ironic, believing God summoned her to the cathedral not to calm her soul but to inspire her to undermine the Nazis’ nefarious intentions. This highlights the theme of The Presence of God in The Face of Powerlessness.

“A system had developed, whenever the Jewish police came calling for ‘volunteers’ for the next transport, of hiding the elderly and frail a few streets ahead of the officers, keeping them moving around with the help of watchful kids on the street corners until they could safely bring them back into their already-searched houses. So far both Ruth and Sarah had escaped deportation. […] Even so, no one ever went to bed or left the house without a fond goodbye these days, just in case it was their last chance.”

At the instigation of the SS, Jewish police patrolled the ghetto with lists of residents. Those less able to work—by which the Nazis meant, do things to support the German war effort—were marked for deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Understanding the police intentions and routine, Jewish residents devised clever hiding places and strategies in order to prevent the police from locating their targets. Stuart points out the continual angst accompanying the awareness of ghetto residents that every parting might be the last time they saw a loved one. This expresses the fatalistic attitude held by many.

“Why couldn’t she have kept quiet like Ruth had said? Why had she picked today to find her voice? But a look at her mother, weak and terrified at her side, told her exactly why. She could not have sent Ruth off alone with these monsters.”

These are Ester’s thoughts as the Jewish police drag her and her mother Ruth to the cattle cars that will take them to the concentration camp. Though filled with regret that she has probably seen her beloved Filip for the last time, Ester realizes that her outburst that persuaded the police to arrest her as well came because, in the depth of her being, she was incapable of allowing the Nazis to take her innocent mother to the gas chamber.

“‘God have mercy on us,’ she muttered and clutched Ester’s arm tighter. ‘Stand up tall, Ester. Look fit and strong.’

As each prisoner was pushed forward, he scrutinized them and then pointed with a stick to the left or the right. It was clear from just one glance at those to the right that they were being designated as unfit for work. Ana looked again to the dark smoke and steeled herself to push her shoulders back and stand tall. Much like in the ghetto, the Nazis only wanted people who might be of use to them.”

Ester and Ana serendipitously discover one another in the cattle car on the way to Birkenau. Ana promises the dying Ruth that she will care for Ester. Thus, when Ana recognizes that they are about to go through the arbitrary selection process—judged by the drunken Doktor Rohde—that will lead either to hard labor or quick death, she summons her inner resources and persuades Rohde that she and Ester are essential to maintaining the camp. This demonstrates the theme of Survival Is the Ultimate Weapon.

“Her stick came down on the woman’s back again and again as the other prisoners cowered away and the SS looked on with bored detachment. […]

Finally, Grese wore herself out and stalked back to join her fellows, leaving the poor woman in a broken heap. Every fiber in Ester wanted to bend to help her but she did not dare; Birkenau had stripped even the humanity of helping others. […] Kindness had become an underground movement.”

Stuart gives an accurate depiction of the brutality of Irma Grese, a sadistic Nazi prison matron. The beating she administers to the woman in this passage comes because of an announcement Grese made, to which the victim spontaneously, innocently asked a one-word question. Ester and the hundreds of other women standing at attention during this beating know that they cannot show any reaction to the beating without receiving the same sort of treatment. As Ester notes, caring for another person is a subversive, punishable form of resistance.

“These days any babies born to non-Jewish mothers were registered as camp inmates and given their own number, tattooed onto their thigh […]

Few mothers could keep them alive for more than a week or two, though even that was more than the poor Jewish children could hope for. Klara and Pfani still had permission—indeed orders—to kill all Jewish babies at birth and prowled Block 24 whenever they knew a Jewish mother was near her time.”

For two years, Ana and Ester serve as midwives to the multitudes of women who end up in the maternity barracks of Birkenau. Over the course of that period, they deliver more than 3,000 babies without losing a mother or child during the birthing process. With only a few exceptions, the infants do not survive more than a few days. Ana notes in her reflections that the birth of every child gives a moment of peace and hope to the mother and to herself. She continues to hope that she will find a way to spare the lives of the children, especially the condemned Jewish babies, she delivers.

“[T]he true horror of Ester’s fate was brought starkly home. She was a Jewish woman, in a camp where a crazed criminal and her prostitute of a helper drowned Jewish babies in a dirty bucket the moment they took their first breath. Filip’s baby was not just a joy, but the greatest possible danger to Ester’s life.”

Stuart portrays the relationship between Ester and Filip as especially passionate and often stymied by the circumstances of their lives in the ghetto. The night before Ester’s arrest, they were together. To Ester’s surprise, she discovers she is pregnant. This creates a quandary for her in that she wants desperately to have children with Filip and recognizes they must wait until after the conclusion of the war. Again, she finds herself trying to decide if this development is splendid or terrible. As the pregnancy progresses, she comes to relish the idea of giving birth to Filip’s child and decides she must find a way to spare its life.

“We take any baby put on the list for the Lebensborn programme and we tattoo them with their mother’s number—small and neat and somewhere it won’t be noticed by the officers. Then, when this is all over, we will have a way of identifying them, finding them, taking them back into our arms.”

In a moment of inspiration, Ester realizes there is a way of permanently marking the newborn infants who will be taken into the Lebensborn programme, in which light-haired infants are stolen from Birkenau mothers and given to German couples to repopulate Germany. Ultimately, she tattoos around 60 infants who go into the program. Stuart points out this is historically accurate, though few if any of the tattooed children returned to their birth mothers.

“Zofia’s baby came into the world, small but bawling loudly enough for someone twice her size. Ana blessed her, as she always did, and Zofia asked her to name her Oliwia, after her sister. The women gathered for the improvised ceremony and Zofia kissed her daughter over and over on her downy hair—her blonde, downy hair.

‘You mark my Oliwia and I’ll find her. One day, I’ll find her.’”

This is an ironic promise on the part of Zofia, since she dies a few days after the SS officers take her child into the Lebensborn programme. The promise, however, turns out to be prophetic. In the Epilogue, Ester and Filip locate and adopt Oliwia, who was the first child Ester tattooed. The adoption of Oliwia is congruent with the motif of blending families that appears throughout. Pippa, Ester’s daughter, remains the object their search at the end of the narrative.

“Opening her mouth, Ana sang the first line of Silent Night. […] The other inmates looked to her, eyes frightened at first but then filling with something warmer, deeper, and as Ana moved into the second line other voices joined hers, tentative at first but growing in volume. Even the Jewish women joined in, stumbling over the words but lending their voices to the music that swelled up and around the camp. […]

The music rose up around the emaciated women in a halo of warm, swirling breath, pouring out their humanity, their togetherness, their refusal just to lie down and die in the dirt of the Nazi regime.”

Irma Grese gathers the women prisoners outside in the snow on Christmas Eve for an act of degradation and humiliation: She lights a Christmas tree atop a mound of deceased victims and proclaims there is no God, which means the Nazis are the world’s ultimate victors. Spontaneously, the women begin to sing Silent Night, for which Grese and the Nazis have no response. As they stand in the snow, Ester goes into labor, delivering her baby on Christmas Day. Ana perceives the spontaneous hymn and the birth of Pippa as Christmas miracles.

“Why did no one come? Did they not care? Did they not believe? Ana would not blame them because the scale of the inhumanity in Birkenau was beyond the imagination of any decent human being, but it would take only a few days of counting the trains into this place to work out that not everyone who arrived was making it into a barrack. Imagination could be questioned; maths could not. It had to be that they did not care.”

In the early days of the war, it seemed as if the Nazis would win, which Ester acknowledged would ultimately mark the demise of Jews and their culture. Over the course of several years, Allies make gains, taking back territory occupied by Germany and causing the camp guards profound anxiety. When the tide of the war turns and camp prisoners hear that Russian forces are near, however, Ana expresses impatience. She cannot believe that the Allies do not bomb, invade, and liberate Auschwitz-Birkenau and other camps about which they surely know. Ana cannot grasp why the liberation of death camps is not an Allied priority.

“Mala had stolen German pride today and, in the process, gifted something back to those prisoners still clinging to life in Birkenau. Ana looked to the skies and prayed that God was taking this angel into his bosom for she had given Ana hope and, although it hurt like the blade of a razor to lose Mala, it would not strangle her like a Nazi noose.

‘Come,’ she said, leading the way into Block 24. ‘We have babies to birth, babies who will live to escape Birkenau.’”

As with the Christmas tree debacle, so this attempt to make the prisoners cower before their tormentors fails. Mala, who escaped the camp with her lover Edek in a bold, daylight ruse, came back to the camp in chains. Maria Mandel, another historical figure, attempts to frighten the imprisoned women by hanging Mala before them. Instead, Mala fearlessly exhorts the women to resist and, on the gallows steps, produces a blade and attempts to end her life rather than be killed. Mala’s defiance inspires the women to continue struggling to survive. Believing again that liberation is near, Ana recovers her drive to deliver children and discover how to help them survive.

“Why, Ana had wondered so many times over this last, vile year, was there no word for a mother who had lost her child? If you lost your husband, you were a widow, if you lost your wife you were a widower, but a parent who lost a child…? Ester called them lost mothers and Ana could see why but Ester, at least, might find her baby again—if they could just make it out of this hell.”

This is one of several passages in which Ana wrestles with the absurdity she experiences because of the war. She confronts the SS, who try to explain that the Jewish home she will move to will be filthy; she confronts Dr. Rohde and then Josef Mengele with the contradictions between their medical callings and their abhorrent behavior; she confronts Klara over her cries for mercy in the face of her own mercilessness. She is unafraid to complain to God about perceived divine shortcomings. Neither does she hesitate to point out society’s shortcomings, as when she notes there is no term for parents who lose their children. The circumstances of the concentration camp highlight the theme of The Human Capacity to Commit Atrocities.

“She tutted at herself but still glanced back into the barrack with something close to fondness.

Ridiculous. This place was a hellhole of misery and suffering, where women and babies came to die. And yet... Ana had birthed nearly 3000 babies in here, and every one of them safely for both mother and baby. True, of all those 3000, only six were still alive in the camp—five born in the last month to non-Jews and one hiding beneath Naomi’s jumper—but over sixty had been taken to be ‘Germanized’ and Ester had managed the tattoo most of them.”

As the Russian forces draw closer and the Nazis stop executing train loads of prisoners and begin to try to obliterate evidence of their crimes, the remaining prisoners must move from one barrack to another. For Ana, this means leaving Block 24, where she, Ester, and others brought life into the world and struggled to save mothers and their infants. Stuart points out that, as with other experiences—such as feeling grateful when Nazis suffer and die—Ana has mixed emotions. The author implies that wartime does not yield itself to clarity of principles and the pure pursuit of ideals. Rather, war creates ambivalence and uncertainty, even for civilians who endure it.

“Ester kicked on until, with a shriek of protest, the wood gave way and she tumbled inside. Ana stepped in after her and looked at the hordes of youngsters stuck inside in disbelief. Birkenau still had the power to shock her. The ones nearest the door, pawing desperately at Ester, were clearly the strongest, but there were so many others beyond, lying weakly on the floor. Had they been in here for two days with no food or water?”

Stuart again depicts a historically accurate account of survivors discovering a dorm of youths when the guards abandoned the camp. While the Nazis allowed small groups of younger children at various points—as when the German High Command wanted to make the camps seem livable and humane, the adult prisoners had no awareness of a barrack comprised entirely of people in their teens and younger. The particular atrocity averted here is the intention of the departing guards to allow the 50 children locked in the barracks to die of thirst and starvation. This highlights the theme of The Human Capacity to Commit Atrocities.

“It was the fearsome Red Army, but the men and women coming up the great central road towards them did not look so much fierce as terrified. Their eyes were as wide as children and they looked around them constantly, taking in the vastness of Birkenau, the unremitting lines of the endless barracks, the harsh wire divisions, the skeletal corpses and the equally skeletal men and women crying out for them to help.

‘Remember the first day we arrived?’ Ester murmured, turning to her. ‘I could not believe this place either.’”

Having been warned by the departing SS that the Red Army was unchecked, Ana and Ester fretted about what would happen when the Russians entered the camp. Here, the women watch, bemused, when the Russians express awe and horror at what they see. Ester remarks ironically that she had the same reaction upon first seeing Birkenau.

“His arms around her and she melted against him. Bartek, her dear Bartek was gone. He was with God, at rest, but somehow their boys were all here. Grief tumbled with joy in her blood so that she had no idea which was ruling her, but she was here. She was free and she, like everyone, owed some part of that freedom to her brave husband and his peers and she must stand up and live a life that would honor their sacrifice.”

Throughout, Ana experiences ambivalence. The ultimate expression of this, however, comes when she arrives at her old home in Łơdź, where her three sons greet her but also tell her that her husband died as a patriot in the Warsaw Uprising. As her oldest son embraces her, it is simultaneously the most joyful and the saddest moment Ana has known since the beginning of the war.

“She would visit the orphanage later, see those babies she had brought into Block 24 and who had, somehow, made it out. If she closed her eyes, she could picture the rough brick stove on which those mothers had labored, she could see the look of total peace in the eyes of every woman who’d held her baby, and the torment for those who’d had them ripped from their arms…Every one of those tattooed children had a bit of herself in them and she was determined to find the mothers’ names from the rabbi and put out the word through every channel she could.”

Ana goes back to work as a midwife in a Łơdź hospital. Thanks to her connection with the recovering Jewish community, however, she works with Rabbi Isaiah Drucker to track down the stolen infants of Birkenau in hopes of restoring them to their birth mothers and, when that is impossible, to the Jewish community. For Ana, the need to pursue the extremely difficult task of searching for these children is as sacred a responsibility as presiding over their births.