I'll never forget the morning that I went to get my son from his crib, only to find it empty. There were no blankets or pillows to search under so I just stared at the empty mattress in a moment of sheer panic. Everything seemed normal in the crib but as I lifted the mattress I noticed that somehow he had managed to wedge himself in between the thin top mattress and the thicker bottom mattress. There he was sleeping soundly sandwiched between the two mattresses as I recovered from a great scare.
As parents we are sometimes put in situations in which we have no control. Despite our best efforts to protect our children there will always be instances that we are unprepared for or unable to change. I recently read an article in Canada's National Post about Miriam Rosenthal, a Jewish woman who was four months pregnant in the Nazi work camp of Auschwitz! The constant dread that this woman faced not only for herself, but for her unborn child is unthinkable.
Miriam was born in Czechoslovakia and married her husband Bela in 1944. A few short months later they were each sent to different Nazi camps, Miriam being four months pregnant. She distinctly remembers and has analyzed many times in her mind the momentary decision that saved her life and the life of her unborn child. Pregnant women were being lined up in the prison camp in order to have their food rations doubled. Miriam recalls that many jumped at this opportunity, even those who were not pregnant. Still, for some reason Miriam did not enter the line, feeling an inexplicable pull to stay back. Two hundred women entered that line and sadly all met their death in the Auschwitz gas chamber. Many pregnant women were first used in experiments. It is horrific to think of some of the atrocities that Nazi women, being mothers themselves participated in.
Miriam's life was spared, but for how long? Eventually she began to show in her pregnancy and was carted off by the SS officers to be delivered to the gas chambers. Miriam had protected her child for this long and now it was utterly out of her control. By some divine grace the officers were unable to deliver Miriam to the crematoriums, telling her that the ovens were no longer working and that she was a "lucky Jew." Luck? Grace? Divine Intervention? These have all been pondered by the ninety-year old woman again and again for many years.
Instead of the crematoriums Miriam was taken to a cold basement of a camp called Kaufering where there were six other pregnant women huddled together. A Jewish woman smuggled a stove into the basement and was beaten terribly for it. Over the course of that winter of 1945 all seven Jewish babies were born, Miriam's son Leslie being the last. Newborns in the camps were often murdered at birth, and so the sweetness of new life also held a great fear for the seven new mothers who had each made it this far.
In late April however, American troops came and liberated the camp. They wept when they discovered the babies in the basement among all of the death and atrocities of the camps. The babies represented hope and new life amid all of the darkness and death. Miriam had somehow survived and given birth in the Nazi prison camps. Upon returning to Czechoslovakia Miriam met with the joyful news that her husband Bela had also survived. Miriam recounts the first moment that Bela saw their son and how he remarked on him having her ears. “I can’t describe that feeling of when he saw our baby, when he saw Leslie for the first time. We cried and cried and cried.”
Miriam and Bela spent most of the rest of their lives together in Canada where Bela served as a rabbi, they ran a gift shop, and raised three children. Bela died at age 97.
Miriam still has a reoccurring nightmare in which Leslie is taken away by the SS guards in the camp. He is now 67 years old and visits his mother every day. Leslie is one of three boys and four girls born in that basement who are still alive today and among the youngest living survivors of the Holocaust.
Pregnant in Auschwitz
The Nazi Women who were every bit as evil as the men
Gisella Perl: Angel and Abortionist in the Auschwitz Death Camp
What a remarkable story. That was a sad time in history and one I pray will never be repeated.
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