“Auschwitz. A Monograph of the Human”. Part 6. Births"

Transcription of the podcast

The book ‘Auschwitz. A Monograph on the Human’ is the first of its kind in the world to try to depict human emotions within the reality of Auschwitz camp. Its author, Museum Director Dr. Piotr Cywiński, draws on fragments of memoirs and testimonies from more than 450 Survivors. It is the words of these direct witnesses that form the basis of this reflection on the human condition amid the process of dehumanization at the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz. In the podcast, we present ten chapters of this unique story about humanity facing the most extreme test.

Part 6. Births
Read by Grey Stafford

Children arriving in Auschwitz invariably posed a problem on many levels which was sooner or slightly later resolved with death. This was probably one of the most tragic experiences burdening the consciences of former prisoners. But there were even more difficult situations that particularly affected the mental state of prisoners in the women’s camp: concentration camp births. Pregnant women arrived in transports, there were also cases of women becoming pregnant in the camp. Either way, children were being born in the camp. The rules were cruel: “Aryan” women theoretically had he right to keep their child, sometimes they were even registered in the camp records, not infrequently tattooed, and kept alive despite all the appalling camp conditions, which most often simply prolonged the infant’s agony. A Jewish woman did not even have that right: her child had to die soon after birth, otherwise she would be killed together with her child. In fact, the vast majority of newly born children died within the first hours or days of their lives.

Wanda Urbańska
“Often one of the women prisoners in this “oven” gives birth to a new prisoner who lives for a very short time”.

Stefania Sikorska
“I was advised to report in the case of imminent delivery, and not to earlier because then I would have to be transferred to the maternity ward in block 24, and in this block, there was “Durchfall” and other diseases”.

In the history of children born in the camp, we touch upon the most brutal dehumanization, we touch the deepest inhumanity of the camp, for we are considering the most unequivocal innocence. In this respect, we may see and feel the fullest and irrefutable inhumanity of Auschwitz concentration camp. Post-war authors of historical works usually state that they will not cite overly brutal descriptions of the camp. But with regard to this issue it cannot be avoided. One cannot comprehend the depth of this nadir without describing it. After many months of waiting, a tiny, innocent, longed-for and loved human being is born. And not only did that baby have no hope of survival, but it was often the mother who had to kill it.

Janina Kowalczyk
“When I was at the Auschwitz camp [January-August 1943], it was not possible to record the birth of a child. During the first week of my internment, a woman from the Zamość region gave birth at block 14. Nurses came to her and took the baby. When I inquired about it, they said that the baby would be exterminated. At the beginning of April, the stance somewhat slackened. Children could live in the same conditions as adults. No special care was permitted. Consequently, the children who had been spared died after some time. … Giving birth during the initial spell at the camp, especially prior to my arrival, and reporting it to the camp authorities meant a death sentence both for the child and the mother. That is why annotations in the records often times said that there had been a miscarriage”.

Maria Ślisz-Oyrzyńska
“The tiny, unfortunate little beings born in our block 17, lying wrapped in lignin; Jewish babies dying, quietly squealing. All this was happening in front of everyone, and that was the most tragic thing. … Tiny, newly born children dying, and so many women, so many mothers were present and nothing happened. How strange, how different that time must have been. For life to be so brutal, even in the first hours after birth”.

Hermann Langbein
“Six babies are lying on a pallet of straw; they can’t be more than a few days old. What a sight! Scrawny limbs and bloated bellies. On the bunk beds next to them lie the mothers—emaciated and with burning eyes. One of them softly sings to herself. She is best off; she has lost her mind”.

Stanisława Leszczyńska
“In May 1943, the situation for some children changed. Those with blue eyes and fair hair were taken away from their mothers and sent to Nakło to be denationalized. The heart-breaking wailing of mothers saying goodbye to the departing transport of infants. While they were still with their mothers, motherhood itself was a ray of hope. The separation from their infants was terrible”.

While pregnancy and childbirth itself in camp conditions were extreme experiences, it was only after delivery that the situation of the mother and new-born baby became truly inhuman. The situation was dictated by the harshest law of the camp. The first problem was the lack of milk for the baby, which concerned most of the malnourished and emaciated mothers. Sometimes the problem could be overcome through solidarity.

Danuta Drzazga
“On 21st October 1944, I gave birth to my daughter, and I called her Jolanta. I was looked after by a midwife, a prisoner from Łódź, a very nice and decent person. I was additionally looked after by Dr Konieczna. I could not feed my daughter because I had inflammation of the breasts. I was operated on by a prisoner physician, a Russian woman (I do not remember her name). After the operation, I had no milk in my breasts. My daughter was fed by Russian, Ukrainian and Yugoslav women who had also given birth in the camp. Later my Jolanta was fed by a Polish woman from Warsaw. She had given birth to a son in the camp, but he died soon afterwards”.

Genowefa Pilecka
“As a result of hunger and conditions in the camp, many mothers had no milk. Russian mothers were more resilient and often breastfed several other women’s infants (in addition to their own). On the bed, next to me, among others, there lay a French woman who was also unable to breastfeed. Her child, however, would not be breastfed by another woman and died”.

It is impossible to describe the tragedy of mothers who after nine months of pregnancy, the difficulties of giving birth and the awakening of natural maternal instincts, lost their child only a short time later. A short time from our perspective, but long enough for the prisoner mother to see, feel, touch, cuddle and name her child, to become emotionally attached. The descriptions of woman survivors, “external” witnesses as well as the mothers themselves—such as were written after the war—are exceptionally laconic.

Zofia Kalmus
“I arrived in Auschwitz on 12 August 1944 from the Warsaw Uprising. I was one of several hundred pregnant women. We gave birth to our children there. As for the Polish women, they were not particularly repressed. There were beatings and sporadic incidents of harassment. However, one day in November 1944, when I was in hospital, about 50 pregnant Hungarian and Slovak Jewish women were brought in … But the gynecologist Dr. Konieczna received orders to “sort out” these women. So, she performed abortions on those in less advanced stages of pregnancy, and with the others she had to induce labor. Mothers whose children were alive were supposed to kill their babies themselves. They could not agree to this. They did not believe it could happen. So these children lived for a week or two. When the date drew near for these sick female patients to be discharged from the hospital, the hospital staff warned them of the fate that would befall them. They were told in no uncertain terms that with children they would only be going up the chimney, while without children they had a chance to save their own lives, for they would then be eligible to join the workforce. The deadline was short, and it was all to be sorted out by the morning. A terrible scene was played out. I remember one image (the witness cries with emotion and falls silent for a moment) of a Jewish woman cruelly struggling with herself, unable to murder her own child. She kept covering the child with a blanket, then after a moment uncovering it and hugging the child. By morning, the child was no longer alive, and her mother, with an insane look in her eyes, was hugging a corpse”.

Alina Bacall-Zwirn
“What I was feeling? Pain. And I just was thinking about my husband. My husband was sick. I didn’t know if he was having typhus. In the same time, I find out. And my sister-in-law die, from pneumonia, I think. And I’m giving birth to my child, and I have to go with the child to crematorium. Because that’s what… I didn’t think about to live. And I think, I couldn’t save the baby. And I’m giving the baby… I give birth to the baby to be killed. And I didn’t have time to be too much in pain, because the baby was born in one second. And normal … I hear the baby crying and crying and crying. And one day, and second day… And I said to her, give me my baby. I want to feed him, feed the baby. And she came to my bed and she start to talk to me and she said… I said, where is the baby? She said, it’s in the, in the… you know, the sick people, some go there, too. Sick people … And I hear the baby crying. And I said, give me the baby. I’m going to… And she said, if I give you the baby, you’re going with the baby. You know what I mean? I said, that’s what I want. I want to go. I’m tired already. And I want to go with the baby to the crematorium. I want to die with my baby … I beg her, I hear crying, and I ask her to give me the baby. I’m very… I said, I don’t want to live. I want to die with my baby, give me my baby … When I didn’t hear the cry. I didn’t have any more tears, you know? I think I didn’t care, I want to die. You know, when comes a minute when you just want to die, you don’t want to live anymore, like everything is closing … You’re tired, you’re tired, you’re sleepy, tired to go on with your life. It’s nothing anymore”.

The Jewish women faced a choice: go to the gas chamber with the child or kill it immediately after birth. It is difficult to comprehend, but sometimes it was an act of humanity when the doctor or midwife killed the baby so that the mother did not have to do it.

Charlotte Zucker
“She told me: “Okay, give me the baby.” I gave her my child. I gave it to her. I did not know what she would do, but I could figure it out. For mothers had to kill their babies. That is how it was. It wasn’t sad. It was inevitable. I gave my child”.
However, even when the mothers, midwives and doctors did everything to save the child, as in the case of every other prisoner, the new-born was threatened by the arbitrary reaction of the SS.

Stefania Rojek
“I was a witness of when a woman from our transport called Zofia (the surname I do not remember) gave birth to a child. The baby was healthy and the doctor and the nurse wanted to hide it. Unfortunately, the baby started crying loudly. Then the SS doctor came, he took the child and in front of its mother and all the other patients, threw it into the burning stove. Zofia had a high fever and died three days later”.

Bogdan Bartnikowski
“The SS-man bent down, grabbed Staś’s leg, took a good swing and we heard this horrible thud. He looked down. Staś’s little legs were twitching for a while and he dropped him on the ground. There was only a dark stain on the barrack wall”.

This was the sixth episode of the podcast based on the book by Dr Piotr Cywiński ‘Auschwitz. A Monograph on the Human’.
Read by Grey Stafford.

The voices of the survivors were provided by volunteer narrators from the Auschwitz Memorial:
Sarah Edwards
Greg Littlefield
Kate Hannah Weinrieb
and Therese McLaughlin

Adaptation for the podcast: Agnieszka Juskowiak-Sawicka
Introduction words: Paweł Sawicki
Music: JivexMusic

Testimonies and memoirs used into the podcast:
Wanda Urbańska (45811), Account in: Testimonies, vol. 72, p. 32.
Stefania Sikorska (32354), Account in: Testimonies, vol. 33, p. 34.
Janina Kowalczyk (32212), Testimonies in the criminal trial of former SS staff [IPN GK 196/161], Chronicles of Terror, vol. 6, p. 177.
Maria Ślisz-Oyrzyńska (40275), in: Ryn, Kłodziński (20019), „Śmierć”, s. 79.
Stanisława Leszczyńska (41335), Account in: Memoirs, vol. 10, p. 3.
Danuta Drzazga (26275), Account in: Testimonies, vol. 33, pp. 75-76.
Genowefa Pilecka (PH nn, 79435), Account in: Testimonies, vol. 16, p. 47.
Zofia Kalmus (83887), Testimonies in the criminal trial of former SS staff [IPN GK 196/110], Chronicles of Terror, vol. 6, pp. 255-256.
Alina Bacall-Zwirn (476490), “No Common Place” (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2000), pp. 73-74.
Charlotte Zucker (75140), “Les balcons fleuris d’Auschwitz” (Champrond en Gâtine: Colombier, 2000), p. 247.
Stefania Rojek (26817), Account in: Testimonies, vol. 32, pp. 20-21.
Bartnikowski (192731), “Childhood Behind Barbed Wire”, p. 136.