Results: Extraordinary Circumstances

Auschwitz is known as a place of death—a hellish extermination camp, the largest of its kind, where at least 1.1 million were murdered. So it's strange to think of the camp as a place of life as well. It was, though—thanks to two courageous women -- Gisella Perl, a Jewish gynecologist and Stanislawa Leszczyńska, a Polish midwife Their stories are a testament to the resistance of these women determined to help their fellow prisoners. Have you heard either of these two women's stories before this?

Gisella Perl, a Jewish gynecologist, was sent to Auschwitz in 1944. Here, she saved thousands of pregnant women from being experimented on by Dr Josef Mengele. Most pregnant women at Auschwitz were sent directly to the gas chambers. Some were spared, only to be turned over to Mengele for his gruesome experiments, on both mothers and their fetus. When Mengele learned of her specialty, he gave her the task of examining every pregnant woman and reporting her to him directly. Dr. Perl decided that never again would there be a pregnant woman in Auschwitz. Dr Perl went to extreme lengths to fulfill that promise. She performed emergency abortions without any tools and behind the Nazis' back - and has since been dubbed the 'Angel of Auschwitz'. She sacrificed the fetus so that the mother would live, since the alternative was certain death or worse. She saved thousands of lives, and her story has been depicted in the 2003 Movie "Out Of The Ashes". Have you seen this movie?

Stanisława Leszczyńska was sent to work under "Sister Klara," a German midwife in the maternity ward. Klara who oversaw the barracks, was in charge of declaring babies born in the ward stillborn, then drowning them in buckets, often in front of the mothers who had just given birth. When Leszczyńska heard what was expected of her in the macabre maternity ward, she refused. Despite threats and beatings by Klara, Leszczyńska simply began caring for mothers and delivering their babies. Despite knowing that most babies she delivered would be killed within a few hours, she worked to save as many of the mothers' lives as she could. Leszczyńska, assisted by her daughter and other prisoners, later said she delivered 3,000 babies during her two years at Auschwitz. She continued to refuse to kill babies despite repeated orders to do so, even standing up to Dr. Josef Mengele, the camp's infamous "Angel of Death," who was known for his brutal experiments on twins and other inmates. Beginning in 1943, some were taken to give to Nazi couples under Nazi Germany's Lebensborn program, which kidnapped up to 100,000 babies in Poland alone. Leszczyńska and her assistants did their best to tattoo the babies who were taken in the hopes they would later be identified and reunited with their mothers. Other women killed their babies themselves rather than hand them over to the Nazis. Her story has been told in the 2019 movie "The Angel of Auschwitz" . Have you seen this movie?

Angela Orosz was just a newborn when the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated 70 years ago. Her mother was the subject of experiments at the hands of Mengele, who among other things, injected poison into her cervix, leaving her sterile, but did not kill the fetus. Her mother then hid the pregnancy and gave birth to Angela in secret. Orosz is one of only two babies known to have been born in the Auschwitz complex and survive to liberation. Some were "adopted" out, so they were not there for liberation. When she started school, she complained to her mother that she wanted her recorded place of birth changed, because writing Auschwitz was too hard to spell (only later would she think about it as too hard an association). Her mother refused, telling her that it was her legacy, and she would grow to explain to people what that meant. It was a mission that she would ultimately fulfill late in her life. She has taken it upon herself to be the voice of those children who did not survive the concentration camps. Her testimony has led to the 21st century convictions of several former Nazis. She lives in Montreal, Canada now, and I had the pleasure to meet her several years back at a human rights dinner. Have you ever met a survivor of the camps?