Polish midwife who was incarcerated at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, where she delivered over 3,000 children. She is an official candidate for canonization (sainthood) by the Catholic Church.
On 17 October 1916 Stanis?awa married printer Bronis?aw Leszczy?ski. She gave birth to son Bronis?aw in 1917, and two years later, daughter Sylwia. In 1920 the family relocated to Warsaw. Stanis?awa enrolled at the midwife college and completed her studies with an Alumnae Achievement Award in 1922. They moved back to ?ód?. She got a job as a midwife, and in the same year gave birth to her second son Stanis?aw. In 1923 her third son, Henryk, was born.
After the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany at the onset of World War II, the Leszczy?ski family was forced to relocate to Wspólna 3 Street when the ?ód? Ghetto was created for the Jews by the Nazi occupation administration. ?urawia Street, where they used to live, became part of the ghetto area. The Leszczy?skis began helping ghettoized Jews by delivering food items and false documents. However, Stanis?awa was caught red-handed, and brought to the Gestapo on 18 February 1943. Her younger children, Sylwia, Stanis?aw, and Henryk were also arrested. Her husband and son Bronis?aw managed to avoid capture and fled the city. The Nazis sent the two boys as slave labour to the stone quarries of Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. Leszczy?ska never saw her husband again; he died in the Warsaw Uprising.
Stanis?awa Leszczy?ska and her 24-year-old daughter Sylwia were transported to Auschwitz concentration camp on 17 April 1943. Stanis?awa was relegated to the women’s camp infirmary along with her daughter, who had been a medical student before the war broke out. Stanis?awa met Dr Mengele, and was advised to write reports about birth problems and diseases in the childbed.
The newborns were snatched away, taken to another room, and drowned in a barrel by Schwester Klara, who was imprisoned at Auschwitz for infanticide, and her assistant, Schwester Pfani. Of the 3,000 babies Leszczy?ska delivered, some 2,500 newborns perished; a few hundred others with blue eyes were sent away to be Germanized. Only about 30 infants survived in the care of their mothers.
Stanis?awa remained the camp’s midwife until it was liberated on 26 January 1945. She returned to ?ód?, and her children also arrived there from the forced labour camps. She settled in an apartment at 99 Zgierska Street and continued working as a midwife locally. She died in ?ód? on 11 March 1974 at age 77 from cancer.
Link to Wikipedia biography