In spite of being dangerously malnourished, all three mothers and their babies survived an epic journey that took them from the ghettos and occupied cities of Europe to Auschwitz II-Birkenau and the eagle-eyed scrutiny of Dr Josef Mengele.
“Are you pregnant, pretty lady?” each of the pretty young Jewish wives was asked by the so-called ‘Angel of Death’ All denied their condition only to be sent on to the next stage of the process designed to systematically work and starve them to death.
Whilst the lives of most of their loved ones were reduced to smoke and ash, each woman gave birth to tiny babies in unspeakable circumstances – on a German factory floor during an air raid, in an open coal wagon in the middle of a storm, and at the gates of one of the worst extermination camps. All were destined for the gas chambers, but the Nazis had run out of deadly Zyklon B the day before. Instead they were left to rot or starve, only to be liberated by American forces a week later.
I first came across this miraculous story by chance in 2013 while reading an online newspaper late into the night. It featured an obituary of a woman who was pregnant in Auschwitz but whose child had been taken away from her and murdered. I realised that despite having read numerous books on the Holocaust I’d never before come across one that detailed what happened to the thousands of pregnant women who’d passed through Auschwitz and other camps.
