The Midwife of Auschwitz

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1

Part 2, Chapters 14-22

Part 2, Chapters 23-32

Part 3-Historical Notes

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Human Capacity to Commit Atrocities

This text reflects the Nazi invasion of Poland and the Holocaust while incorporating elements of fiction to explore human interiority. While these historical events were observed and recorded, the atrocities of the Holocaust can seem beyond belief; the fictionalizing of historical events makes these distant atrocities immediate for contemporary readers. Upon their return to Łơdź, Ana and Ester discover that even Polish citizens who lived through six years of conflict near the concentration camps have trouble believing the stories from inside. For example, an elderly man—recuperating on an upper floor of a hospital from an attack by an SS officer—refuses to go to the poison gas that awaits him, and a Nazi throws him out the window to his death. In another scene, a young Jewish man must use concrete slabs to pound the skeletons of recently deceased Jews into powder.

These events are described with little foreshadowing, providing a shocking effect that mirrors the reality of atrocity in life: In war, atrocity can arise at any time, often in high frequencies. The perpetrators of these horrific atrocities are, in many ways, ordinary people who are asked to commit crimes to maintain position and power. The ordinary nature of perpetrators of war crimes is highlighted within the text through casual, believable actions to show their humanity, but also their cruelty. To commit atrocity in war, there may be a lack of sensitivity, even willfully, to justify such behavior to oneself. For example, Ana Stuart describes Josef Mengele, one of most notorious figures of the Holocaust, debating with Ana about whether Jews are truly human. By comparing Jews to rats, the character of Mengele removes their humanity, reframing Jews in a way that, to him, makes their mass murder seem like a necessary act. The absurdity of his logic reveals the ways in which perpetrators of atrocity reframe murder to justify their behavior.

Over 17 million people, 6 million of whom were Jews, died at the hands of the Nazis. Many incomprehensible horrors were perpetrated by ruthlessly cruel leaders and the people who followed their command, demonstrating The Human Capacity to Commit Atrocities. While the minds of these perpetrators cannot be understood in a literal sense, the text explores the idea that dehumanization and stereotype can contribute to the targeting of specific groups and that ordinary people can be pressed into committing atrocities.

Survival Is the Ultimate Weapon

Upon observing the stunned expressions of Red Army soldiers entering Birkenau, Ester tells Ana that she also did not believe what she saw when she first arrived. When Ana and Ester disembark from the cattle car, they have each just endured the most horrific experience of their lives. Ana has survived beatings and torture at the hands of SS officers who try—unsuccessfully—to get her to inform on other Polish resistance workers. She does not know the fate of her two sons arrested with her, as well as her husband and older son. In trying to prevent her mother’s arrest, Ester’s zeal results in her own capture, and her mother dies in her arms. She had no chance to bid farewell to her husband or her father, and she wonders if her sister safely avoided capture. For each of these women, the world they knew has abruptly come to an end, and the world of the concentration camp will be even worse. Though they survive Doktor Rohde, they immediately lose their personal possessions, including their clothing. Guards shave all the hair on their bodies before they are redressed in ill-fitting shifts and wooden clogs. They are without any resources or agency, just like the other 50,000 women prisoners at Birkenau.

That they recognize the abject powerlessness of their state fulfills the intentions of their captors. What comes to Ana as she holds Ester’s arm and walks forward into the camp is that they have a single weapon left. As they will repeat to one another and share with the other women in their barracks, survival is the one weapon they have left: The one ultimate goal of these women is to outlive Birkenau.

The difficulty of simple survival increases for the prisoners the longer they remain in the camp. They face life-threatening diseases, such as lice-born typhus in hot weather and tuberculosis in cold weather. There is little clean water, miniscule amounts of food, and virtually no medicine. They deal with despair, beatings, and cruel treatment. So many fellow prisoners die that the women in the barracks must drag out corpses every day. At the same time, meeting and surviving each challenge is an act of empowerment. With each new issue they face and endure, the women gain new abilities. Each day they recognize, claim, and develop greater inner strength. A key resource they acquire is the fellowship of other prisoners. Ana, Ester, and Naomi develop a resilient shared bond. At various moments, each of them encounters devastating crises that leave them asking if anything is really worth surviving for. In these moments of despair, the women lift one another up and remind each other that their one unfailing weapon is survival.

The Presence of God in the Face of Powerlessness

In Chapter 2, Ana and Ester are both presented as women inculcated in their traditional religions. As Ana sits in a synagogue, she hopes it is alright with her Christian God that she is attending a wedding in a Jewish place of worship—though Bartek assures her that what they are doing transcends one’s religious background. For Ester, the wedding is an immersion in the ancient, traditional elements of her faith, ripe with symbolism and full of joy. As the ceremony gives way to celebration, the event is interrupted by jackbooted Nazi soldiers who announce they have come to destroy this and all synagogues in Łơdź. This event symbolizes a basic religious question that underlies the narrative: Is God present when even the most observant worshippers have lost all power? Throughout the challenges Ana and Ester face, this question reemerges repeatedly.

The scale and scope of the Holocaust’s atrocities lend themselves to exploring the nature of, and loss of, faith in fiction. Ester and her family, chased out of their synagogue during her wedding reception, lose their place of worship. When Ana, seeking spiritual relief and answers, goes to her St. Stanislaus Cathedral, the peace of mind she seeks does not come. Instead, she learns the horrific news that the work camps the Nazis have been bragging about are death camps. From this juncture, Ana’s religious questioning becomes more intense. She routinely asks what God is up to and why God has allowed the situation she faces to develop. She notes that the Germans do not worship any god but Hitler. Ester struggles with the seeming absence of the Almighty as well, deciding that—if God is in touch with what is happening in Poland—He must be weeping. The religious questioning becomes exacerbated when Ana and Ester end up in Birkenau. There, whenever Ana mentions God, Klara mocks her. No less a formidable foe than Maria Mandel gathers all the women in the camp for a Christmas announcement and proclaims that there is no god except for the Nazis.

Throughout the narrative, however, when the women find themselves in a precarious place, a small, subtle miracle occurs. For example, far along in her own pregnancy, Ester struggles to find a way to mark those babies she knows the SS will steal. She learns that Klara’s assistant, Pfani, who tattoos all the non-Jewish babies, is moving to the opposite side of Auschwitz. Ester tricks Klara into giving her the job of tattooing babies, opening the door for Ester to permanently mark her child and the babies of others with their mothers’ identification numbers. Stuart suggests that these incremental acts of serendipity provide just the pivotal help Ana and Ester need as they work to survive Birkenau and one day return to their lives, something each of them accomplishes with the tiny interventions of their God.