10/3/10

Polish women Stanislawa Leszczynska to be honored for saving Jewish babies during the Holocaust.


Polish woman to be honored for saving Jewish babies during the Holocaust
Friday, October 01, 2010 By Speroforum

A woman who saved hundreds of newborn babies from Nazis during the Second World War will be honoured during the 5th World Prayer Congress for Life, organized by Human Life International in Rome from October 5th to 10th. According to LifeSiteNews, the late Polish midwife, Stanislawa Leszczynska will be honoured for her heroic efforts in saving newborn babies from a brutal end at Auschwitz, a network of concentration and extermination camps that were built and operated in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany. Before she arrived at the camp in April 1943, all the newborns of prisoners in the infamous Nazi concentration camps were drowned and allowed to be ripped apart by rats before their mothers' eyes. But, as Matthew M. Anger reports in his article, 'Midwife at Auschwitz,' Leszczynska refused to carry out the Germans' order to kill the babies even opposing the infamous Dr. Mengele and, amazingly, was allowed to carry on unimpeded. During her time at Auschwitz, Leszczynska delivered over 3,000 babies. Half of those were murdered and another thousand died from the horrible conditions in the camp.


Father Nithiya believes the whole world should embrace the message of peace promoted by Mahatma Gandhi. The need to look to the poor and needy, because only with the development of the least can a just and tolerant society be achieved.But those with blond hair and blue eyes, about 500, were sent to be raised as Germans, and another 30 survived the camp. In her 'Report from Auschwitz,' Leszczynska described how the pregnant women were plagued with intense hunger and extreme cold and faced a severe lack of medicine and water. She and others had to work day and night to keep away the rats, which would gnaw off the noses, ears, fingers and feet of the sick. "Rats with their diet of human flesh grew to sizes of large cats,"” she said.
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During Leszczynska's entire time at the camp, no mother or baby died under her care. Asked by her supervising doctor to report on the death rate, she reported this fact to his astonishment. "Lagerarzt looked at me in disbelief,"” she recounts. Even the most sophisticated German clinics at universities, he said, could not claim such a success rate.” Leszczynska was able to use a secret tattoo under the newborns’ armpit to help many of the families reunite after the war. "As long as a newborn was together with the mother, motherhood itself created a ray of hope. Separation with the newborn was overwhelming," she said. "The thought of a possibility of future reunion with their children helped many women go through this ordeal."” The cause for Leszczynska's beatification in the Catholic Church is underway. The Stanislawa Leszczynska Foundation, led by members of her family, is working on a feature film about her life. Various high-level Vatican officials will attend the worldwide pro-life movement meeting scheduled to take place in Rome.

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