Member Review

As much as I have enjoyed Anna Stuart's "based on true stories" tales woven with fiction, I found THE MIDWIFE OF AUSCHWITZ an incredibly heartbreaking one to read. Although all stories about the Holocaust the the crimes against humanity are just as heartbreaking, I am finding it incresingly difficult to read them. However, as difficult as it was to read this one, I'm glad I did. It was a different tale although it began like any other Holocaust story with Jews being ripped of their identities, moved into stinking ghettos before being deported to death camps or the like. It wasn't until they reached Auschwitz that the story took a slightly different turn.

Ester was a young nurse, who is Jewish, living and working in Lodz in Poland when she and her new husband Filip Pasternak along with their families were rounded up and rehoused in the new ghetto as the Germans overtook their town. Their house had been given over to the Germans to house troops while they now lived in barely two rooms all together.

Ana Kaminski, a Catholic Pole, has worked as a midwife for two decades. Alongside her, her dear friend Ester Pasternak learns the art of birthing as together they bring new life into the world in the ghetto and beyond.

Until one day, ripped from her husband and her family, Ester finds herself on a train bound for Auschwitz in the hope of saving her dying mother. In the cattle-car she is shocked to find her friend and mentor, Ana, looking a shadow of her former self. Together the two women arrive at Auschwitz with the idealistic notion that they can help save the women and their babies. But Auschwitz was nothing if not cruel and unforgiving, the SS officers even more so. The barbaric cruelties they are forced to face change the way they see the world whilst trying to maintain some form of hope. For if they have no hope, what do they have?

In Auschwitz, Ana and Ester bring 3000 babies into the world. Some lived, some died. But through each mother's pain, the two women gave each of them hope...even if it were to die tomorrow. And then a new cruelty is to be inflicted upon them. Perfect blonde babies will be selected from the newborns for Germanisation, ripped from their mother's arms as they suckle to be brought up in "good Fuhrer loving homes". These selections are the worst kind of cruelty.

So Ester devises a plan to one day bring hope to these families torn apart by tattooing the little ones with their mother's numbers, in the hope that they may be reunited once the war is over and the camp has been liberated. In the meantime, they continue to help each other drawing on one another's strength and resilience to make it through.

But then Ana notices the familiar signs and a small bump beneath Ester's thin clothing...

I was both saddened and angered by this tale. Though I shouldn't be surprised at the Nazi's cruelties during that time. The barbaric nature of such inhumanity resonated with me that my heart ached for the women. Already they had been stripped of everything and still they wanted to take even more? How mankind can inflict such cruelties upon each other is beyond me.

Alternating between the narratives of both Ester and Ana, THE MIDWIFE OF AUSCHWITZ is a heartwrenching tale of friendship, motherhood and survival. How anyone can survive a death camp is remarkable. My heart ached for both women but particularly young Ester.

By the end of the book I was just heartbroken that it hadn't ended how I thought it would. But it was still a satisfying end and a tearful one at that. Anna Stuart tells a wonderful tale and is a skillfull storyteller. I absolutely LOVED "The Secret Diary" but this one was just that more heartbreaking.

I would like to thank #AnnaStuart, #NetGalley and #Bookouture for an ARC of #TheMidwifeOfAuschwitz in exchange for an honest review.

This review appears on my blog at https://stinathebookaholic.blogspot.com/.