Fifty years ago died one of the most remarkable women of the 20th century. You have probably never heard of Stanisława Leszczyńska. Few people have. Yet she was a model of heroism and humanity who should be acclaimed around the globe.

Stanisława was a Polish midwife who worked for two years in the maternity ward at Auschwitz. Yes, there was such a place. Most pregnant women who arrived at the death camp were sent straight to their death. But not all of them were and some women became pregnant in the camp. As a result, thousands of babies were born in a place that has become a byword for cruelty.

The maternity ward was a small part of the blocks for women prisoners. It consisted of about 30 bunks near a brick stove which served as a bed for childbirth. There might have been three or four women in each bunk. Conditions were indescribably foul. Most women had dysentery; rats as big as cats swarmed in the unheated sheds, devouring corpses. Every day 10 or 20 women died. There was almost no fresh water.

In this place of torment Stanisława Leszczyńska delivered 3,000 babies.

As she recalled later on, “Contrary to all expectations and in spite of the extremely inauspicious conditions, all the babies born in the concentration camp were born alive and looked healthy at birth. Nature defied hatred and extermination and stubbornly fought for her rights, drawing on an unknown reserve of vitality.”

Stanisława was born in the city of Łódź in 1896. She married a printer, Bronisław Leszczyński, during World War I and they eventually had four children. She qualified as a midwife in 1922. She was deeply religious -- which may help to explain her resilience and courage in the death camp. According to a profile in Church Life Journal, “After graduating with honors, Stanisława knelt in a church and consecrated her work as a midwife to the Blessed Mother, vowing that if ever she lost a baby she would give up midwifery.”

When the Germans invaded Poland, the Leszczyński family became involved in the Polish resistance. Bronisław died in the Warsaw uprising; Stanisława and her children helped Jews in the Łódź ghetto by delivering food and false documents but in 1943 they were caught by the Gestapo. Two of her sons were sent to a slave labour camp; she and her daughter Sylwia were sent to Auschwitz. The numbers tattooed on their forearms were 41335 and 41336.

At the camp she volunteered to work as a midwife, assisted by Sylwia.

She described the conditions in the “maternity ward” with clinical detachment in a brief speech she made in 1957. They are too hellish to relate here. But something remarkable happened. She wrote:

In spite of the appalling filth, the teeming vermin and the rats, in spite of the infectious diseases, the lack of water and other dreadful, indescribable things, something that was most extraordinary went on there.

One day the Lagerarzt (the camp doctor) told me to present a report on the postpartum infections and mortality rate for the mothers and newborns. I told him that I hadn’t had a single death of a mother or neonate. He looked at me in disbelief and said that even the best German university hospitals could not boast of such a success rate. In his eyes I could see anger and hatred. Perhaps the extremely debilitated bodies of my patients were too poor a culture medium for bacteria to thrive on.

However, of the 3,000 babies that Stanisława delivered, only a handful lived. A thousand died of starvation or disease. About 1,500 were drowned by two women orderlies, Schwester (“sister”) Klara, a midwife who had been jailed for infanticide, and Schwester Pfani, a prostitute. A few hundred babies with blue eyes were sent away to be adopted by German mothers. About 30 survived in the care of their mothers.