Stanislawa Leszczynska, a Polish midwife imprisoned at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Nazi Germany-occupied Poland, delivered 3,000 babies of different nationalities and treated them and their mothers with heroic humanity.
As Poland commemorated the 50th anniversary of her death on 11th March, the diocesan phase of her sainthood cause came to a close. “The laity, ordinary and not ordinary, can be the best personal role models for all of us,” Cardinal Grzegorz Rys of Lódz told Polish weekly Gosc Niedzielny (Sunday Visitor) prior to celebrating Mass to finalise the first local stage in her cause.
Amid the horrors of World War II, after helping Jews escape from the ghetto and giving them food, Leszczynska and her daughter Sylwia were arrested, interrogated by the Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
As an experienced midwife, Leszczynska persuaded camp authorities to let her deliver babies in Auschwitz-Birkenau’s infirmary. According to her own count, Leszczynska delivered 3,000 births. “Although some have been skeptical about this number, it was based on her calculations,” said Maria Stachurska, Leszczynska’s grand-niece and a filmmaker who has directed a documentary and is now co-writing the script for a drama film about her relative.
Among all the births Leszczynska delivered, not one child died during birth and not a single mother died of postpartum infections. In the early 1990s, the Catholic Church formally launched Leszczynska’s sainthood cause.
Picture: Stanislawa Leszczynska, a Polish Catholic midwife imprisoned at Auschwitz-Birkenau who delivered 3,000 babies of different nationalities, is seen in an undated photo. The 50th anniversary of her death, on 11th March 2024, also marked the end of the diocesan phase of her sainthood cause. (OSV News photo/courtesy Maria Stachurska)