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Speaker 1: Heinrich was having a bad time. For two years, he

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Speaker 1: had been an inquisitor in southern Germany and was involved

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Speaker 1: in the witch trials that had begun to sweep western Europe.

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Speaker 1: But Heinrich ended up not being a good fit for

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Speaker 1: his role. Although he had a profound sense of duty,

6
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Speaker 1: he lacked any sense of professionalism. For one thing, he

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Speaker 1: had become deeply obsessed with the sex life of one

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Speaker 1: of the women he accused and brought to trial. It

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Speaker 1: was all too much, and his unhinged displays were deeply embarrassing.

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Speaker 1: Because of this, the bishop, his boss, set free every

11
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Speaker 1: last woman on trial that day, fired Heinrich and publicly

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Speaker 1: declared him to be insane. Heinrich, who had been looking

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Speaker 1: forward to making a name for himself, was mortified, inconsolable.

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Speaker 1: Even The next course of action, it was decided, would

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Speaker 1: be to put his truths down on paper. He would

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Speaker 1: write a book. The year was fourteen eighty six, and

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Speaker 1: it would be a clap that would echo for centuries

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Speaker 1: to come. Heinrich took to his study and got out

19
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Speaker 1: his ink his order of business created a guidebook that

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Speaker 1: would help solve for this world that he felt was

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Speaker 1: perverted by women. He wrote hundreds of pages on how

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Speaker 1: to spot treacherous ones, on how women often caroused with

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Speaker 1: the devil, on how they practiced witchcraft and were generally

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Speaker 1: up to evil doings. It acted as a guide for

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Speaker 1: identifying witches and suggested different kinds of torture, prosecution strategies,

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Speaker 1: and punishments for those convicted of the charges outlined in

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Speaker 1: its pages. The ones he cautioned his readers to fear

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Speaker 1: the most, he wrote, were the concubines, domineering spouses, and midwives.

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Speaker 1: The latter, he wrote, was the worst of the worst.

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Speaker 1: Heinrich wrote that midwives not only killed babies at birth,

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Speaker 1: but hungered to drink their blood. He claimed that midwives

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Speaker 1: were in the business of actively recruiting young women to

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Speaker 1: join their ranks, and had the best luck with ones

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Speaker 1: who were already morally corrupt by signing over their souls

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Speaker 1: to the devil, giving over the souls of the babies

36
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Speaker 1: in their charge. He believed that Europe was under spiritual siege,

37
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Speaker 1: and if only people knew the satanic midwives could be stopped.

38
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Speaker 1: It was a madman's treatise with an academic flourish, and

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Speaker 1: Heinrich Cramer wanted to get his writings into as many

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Speaker 1: hands as possible. The advent of the printing press indeed

41
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Speaker 1: allowed this to happen, spreading copies of his Malleus Maleficarum

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Speaker 1: far and wide. The book was condemned by top theologians

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Speaker 1: and decried by the Catholic Church. They saw these accusations

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Speaker 1: as reprehensible and suggestions of torture to illicit confession as unethical. Midwives,

45
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Speaker 1: after all, were often the local healers. They were in

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Speaker 1: the business of helping people get well, birthing babies, and

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Speaker 1: even legally allowed to care for their spiritual wellbeing through baptism.

48
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Speaker 1: But still the book gained momentum in the secular courts

49
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Speaker 1: and with lay people who could afford to purchase it.

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Speaker 1: By sixteen oh four, King James the First declared that

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Speaker 1: he would rather his child was baptized by an ape

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Speaker 1: as by a woman, repeating Heinrich's idea that midwives were

53
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Speaker 1: in the business of trickery and soul stealing. But to

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Speaker 1: some it was clear that it wasn't the souls of

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Speaker 1: a nation that were under attack, but rather the midwives themselves,

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Speaker 1: the very people who tended to their survival I'm Aaron Manke,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to bedside manners. Giving birth is an incredible feat.

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Speaker 1: Of course, I haven't done it myself, but I hear

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Speaker 1: that words sometimes fall short in describing how profound of

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Speaker 1: an experience it truly is. And for as long as

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Speaker 1: women have been giving birth, midwives have been present. The

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Speaker 1: word quite literally means with women. Written and oral traditions

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Speaker 1: across ancient cultures affirm the importance of midwives in their societies.

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Speaker 1: In ancient Rome and Greece, the formally educated midas wives

65
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Speaker 1: were held in such high esteem that the writings were

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Speaker 1: often cited by male physicians. We see reverence for them

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Speaker 1: in Egyptian carvings. Communities have long looked to their midwives,

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Speaker 1: who were often versed in all matters of life and death.

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Speaker 1: They worked in the homes of expectant mothers or made

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Speaker 1: private spaces for them to come give birth. To be

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Speaker 1: a midwife was in honor. It was long a position

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Speaker 1: of power, respect and expertise. So it was a curious

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Speaker 1: moment when in sixteen fifty eight English physician Perceval Willoughby

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Speaker 1: sheepishly crawled on his hands and knees into the birthing

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Speaker 1: room of an expectant mother. Had the laboring patient been

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Speaker 1: made aware of his arrival, she probably would have been horrified.

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Speaker 1: Having a man in the birthing chamber was considered indecent.

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Speaker 1: Perceval's own daughter, a midwife, had asked him to advise

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Speaker 1: on what she believed to be a particularly difficult case

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Speaker 1: of a baby in the breach position. The record tells

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Speaker 1: us that he merely took a quick look, supposedly unnoticed,

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Speaker 1: and slunk away. Perceval gave his thoughts on the baby's position,

83
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Speaker 1: but he was wrong. How could he have known about

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Speaker 1: what the baby was doing by simply looking from across

85
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Speaker 1: the room. But still his advice was sought. Perceval's story

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Speaker 1: was emblematic of the moment you see beyond that birthing room,

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Speaker 1: something strange was happening. Although midwiffery had long been the

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Speaker 1: domain of women, men were beginning to encroach in what

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Speaker 1: amounted to a business opportunity. Women had the market cornered,

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Speaker 1: and they saw that there was money to be made.

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Speaker 1: Perceval and his medical school cronies got into the business

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Speaker 1: of publishing midwiffery manuals. They were going to great lengths

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Speaker 1: to assert their authority over the long standing female domain,

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Speaker 1: even though this particular striving was far out of step

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Speaker 1: with the social norms. Then, in sixteen seventy one a

96
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Speaker 1: response came. A woman named Jane Sharp published The Midwives Book,

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Speaker 1: or the Whole Art of Midwiffery Discovered in England. At

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Speaker 1: almost one hundred thousand words long, the book was revolutionary.

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Speaker 1: Jane's book documented actual practice, anecdotes and observations of birth,

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Speaker 1: wrote expertly about anatomy and sex, conception and disease, and

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Speaker 1: pregnancy and delivery. What made this text so novel was

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Speaker 1: that it was written in plain language for everyone. You

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Speaker 1: didn't have to have a medical degree to understand it.

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Speaker 1: Her voice was authoritative and her stance was confident. For millennia,

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Speaker 1: women's knowledge of bodies and how to care for them

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Speaker 1: had been passed down orally kept in diaries or shared

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Speaker 1: in letters, but never had such a grand treatise been

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Speaker 1: made so widely available. It was an answer to all

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Speaker 1: of the men who were writing and selling midwifery books

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Speaker 1: without having ever delivered a baby. In the pages of

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Speaker 1: her book, she asserted the rights of herself and other

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Speaker 1: women to continue doing birth work. It's possible that she

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Speaker 1: sensed what was coming for midwives and edging out by

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Speaker 1: the medical establishment. She wasn't going down without a fight, though,

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Speaker 1: so she set out to prove that the pen was

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Speaker 1: indeed just as mighty as the sword. Two centuries later,

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Speaker 1: and across the world, in America's Ozark Mountains, a granny

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Speaker 1: woman caught a baby. This wasn't her first and surely

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be her last. Laboring women always called upon her

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Speaker 1: when their birthing time drew near. She was a mother

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Speaker 1: many times over, and a grandmother too. She was an

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Speaker 1: auntie beloved by her neighbors, young and old, and knew

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Speaker 1: everyone and everything that lived within her community. From her

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Speaker 1: gardens and woods, she gathered native plants, knowing that through

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Speaker 1: the alchemy of heat and time, she could turn them

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Speaker 1: into soothing potions. She loved the sap from sweetgum trees

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Speaker 1: and the leaves of yellow dock for teas. She learned

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Speaker 1: these things from her mother and from her grandmother. Carrying

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Speaker 1: on a long vocation of community care, our granny Woman

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Speaker 1: and her sisters all carried with them the midwifing traditions

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Speaker 1: of their enslaved ancestors. During America's enslavement of African people,

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Speaker 1: The granny woman held a special place in plantation society.

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Speaker 1: From the perspective of her captors, it was her job

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Speaker 1: to keep her fellow slaves healthy and to ensure their

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Speaker 1: fertility in order to make more enslaved bodies for her

136
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Speaker 1: fellow captives. She was there to protect them with her

137
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Speaker 1: deep held knowledge of both plant medicine and the female body.

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Speaker 1: The reputation of such women was held in high esteem

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Speaker 1: in this social order, which allowed her to occupy a

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Speaker 1: unique liminal space. She might be sought out for medical

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Speaker 1: care from her white owners, or be allowed to travel

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Speaker 1: to a birth on a neighboring plantation. She might attend

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Speaker 1: to blackbirths as well as white ones. With the Emancipation

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Speaker 1: Proclamation of eighteen sixty three, the formerly enslaved population did

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Speaker 1: what they could to establish themselves in a hostile land.

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Speaker 1: These black midwives entered into the free market, free to

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Speaker 1: practice how and on who they chose. Midwives worked across

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Speaker 1: the country and importantly held down their posts in poor

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Speaker 1: and rural areas. They provided crucial gaps in community care.

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Speaker 1: White physicians, many who had recently come back from training

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Speaker 1: at European medical schools felt threatened by these midwives. As

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Speaker 1: medicine began to gel into a professional class, those in

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Speaker 1: power had a lot of interest in gatekeeping. These newly

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Speaker 1: minted physicians had their economic security to protect. By the

155
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Speaker 1: early twentieth century, the schools would begin to teach obstetrics,

156
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Speaker 1: which finds its roots in the modern Latin word which

157
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Speaker 1: means quite literally midwife. Perhaps they found this term to

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Speaker 1: be more academic. In doing so, they were intentionally distancing

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Speaker 1: themselves from the more informal, long women held tradition of delivery.

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Speaker 1: It was an attempt to edge out women from their

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Speaker 1: profession and gain more of the market share that was

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Speaker 1: women's bodies. But in nineteen ten, a landmark publication arrived.

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Speaker 1: The Flexner Report was a study of American medical education.

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Speaker 1: The report revealed a high maternal mortality rate. It situated

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Speaker 1: midwifery firmly in its crosshairs and recommended that birth should

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Speaker 1: be treated as a medical event, so hospitalizing every mother

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Speaker 1: and abolishing midwiffery. This would create a steady streat of

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Speaker 1: revenue for new hospitals. At this point, about half of

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Speaker 1: the births in America were attended to by physicians and

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Speaker 1: the other half by midwives. The following year, an obstetric's

171
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Speaker 1: professor in New York was quoted in saying that midwives

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Speaker 1: are and I quote dark, dirty, ignorant, untrained, incompetent women.

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Speaker 1: Evil though necessary, evil that must be controlled. We must

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Speaker 1: save our women. By nineteen fifteen, doctor Joseph de Ley,

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Speaker 1: the most famous obstetrician of the day, suggested that birth

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Speaker 1: be viewed as a dangerous pathological process that must be

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Speaker 1: controlled to the highest degree. He believed that every woman

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Speaker 1: in labor needed medical intervention, even when the intervention itself

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Speaker 1: left long lasting damage to the mother and child. He

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Speaker 1: invited the use of forceps, restraints, episiotomies, and drug cocktails

181
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Speaker 1: to knock laboring mothers unconscious. He stripped humanity from childbirth,

182
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Speaker 1: and to many it seemed that modernity had finally arrived.

183
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Speaker 1: By nineteen seventeen, a national debate and dias desire for

184
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Speaker 1: governmental response had been triggered. They needed to do something

185
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Speaker 1: about the American midwife problem. In nineteen twenty one, the

186
00:11:08,120 --> 00:11:11,360
Speaker 1: Shepherd Tuner Act was passed by Congress, which provided federal

187
00:11:11,400 --> 00:11:14,960
Speaker 1: funding for maternity and childcare. The states were required to

188
00:11:15,040 --> 00:11:19,000
Speaker 1: match these federal dollars, but without necessary health care infrastructure,

189
00:11:19,320 --> 00:11:23,120
Speaker 1: many rural places heartily welcomed midwiffree to fill in the gaps.

190
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Speaker 1: States worked towards regulating their practices in the meantime, requiring

191
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Speaker 1: training and licenses in order for them to legally work,

192
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Speaker 1: but none of this made birth safer. In fact, until

193
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Speaker 1: the invention of antibiotics in nineteen twenty eight, maternal and

194
00:11:36,960 --> 00:11:40,720
Speaker 1: infant hospital deaths kept rising, as did the incidents of

195
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Speaker 1: death from birth injuries. America saw a forty one percent

196
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Speaker 1: increase in infant mortality due to injury between nineteen fifteen

197
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Speaker 1: and nineteen twenty nine, primarily due to invasive obstetrical interference.

198
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Speaker 1: By nineteen thirty five, less than fifteen percent of American

199
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Speaker 1: births were attended by midwives. Practitioners were working in the poor,

200
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Speaker 1: black and rural South, a place where many white doctors

201
00:12:05,880 --> 00:12:08,280
Speaker 1: chose not to go. But it was also around this

202
00:12:08,400 --> 00:12:12,400
Speaker 1: time in rural Alabama that a very special baby was born.

203
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Speaker 1: Annie Lee Logan came into the world as the fourteenth

204
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Speaker 1: child of Martha and Lenn Rodgers. She was born around

205
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Speaker 1: nineteen ten near the community of Sweetwater. Her family's land

206
00:12:29,080 --> 00:12:32,120
Speaker 1: was beautiful as the name suggested. Her parents owned it,

207
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Speaker 1: and even though they were cash poor, they lived in

208
00:12:34,640 --> 00:12:38,680
Speaker 1: abundance among their fruit orchards, rice fields, and vegetable gardens.

209
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Speaker 1: As Annie got older, she began to experience fainting spells.

210
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Speaker 1: These kept her from working her family's fields and gardens,

211
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Speaker 1: but they gave her access to another world. She went

212
00:12:48,320 --> 00:12:51,440
Speaker 1: off with her mother to deliver local babies. Annie was

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Speaker 1: curious about everything that she saw and cared for her

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Speaker 1: baby dolls just as well as her mother cared for

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Speaker 1: new infants. By the time Annie was about eight years old,

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Speaker 1: the state legislature began to crack down on non licensed midwives,

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Speaker 1: which is to say all of them. The state of

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Speaker 1: Alabama soon established a regulatory board which managed all registration

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Speaker 1: and training. And while this seems like a sensible chapter

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Speaker 1: in the March toward progress, the truth was a bit

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Speaker 1: more complicated. You see, America didn't have a midwife problem

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Speaker 1: like the American Medical Association claim. Rather, it was the

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Speaker 1: midwives who had a problem on their hands. The issue

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Speaker 1: here was one of inclusion. Long ago, Europe had established

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Speaker 1: midwiffery schools and accepted them as integral parts of the

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Speaker 1: medical field. But this was not true for America. Instead,

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Speaker 1: American medical schools refused to accept women into their ranks,

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Speaker 1: let alone black women. They wanted to replace all midwives

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Speaker 1: with male doctors, many of whom lacked functional knowledge and

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Speaker 1: culturally competent care. After her mother died when Annie was

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Speaker 1: about eighteen years old, she went to work to support

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Speaker 1: her family. She took up work as a domestic servant.

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Speaker 1: A few years later, already having had a child of

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Speaker 1: her own, she began to consider what it might mean

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Speaker 1: to her to become a midwife. It was when she

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Speaker 1: received heaping praise while helping a local doctor deliver her

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Speaker 1: employer's child that she realized that her life's course had

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Speaker 1: already been charted. She took up work as a granny woman,

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Speaker 1: just as her mother had been. Annie was working in

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Speaker 1: rural communities at a time when white doctors refused to

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Speaker 1: deliver black babies. She was one of thousands who continued

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Speaker 1: to work across Alabama. Often, the families that Annie and

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Speaker 1: her fellow midwives worked with were living in deep poverty.

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Speaker 1: Even still, these birth workers considered their path a calling

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Speaker 1: and found ways to barter and give their time beyond

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Speaker 1: delivering children. They provided care for the household. They cooked

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Speaker 1: and cleaned, and helped prepare for the baby's arrival. They

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Speaker 1: prayed with scared parents and wiped the laboring mother's brow.

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Speaker 1: Unlike the medical doctors of her day, who wished to

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Speaker 1: expedite childbirth by any means necessary, Annie made sure that

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Speaker 1: she didn't rush it. She would later recall a birth

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Speaker 1: she attended alongside a supervisor. A mother had gone into

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Speaker 1: labor with twins. The first child was born, but he

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Speaker 1: wasn't breathing. Her supervisor set the baby aside, assuming he

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Speaker 1: was dead, as she assisted the second child from the

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Speaker 1: birth canal. Annie, having never been trained in mouth to

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Speaker 1: mouth resuscitation, had a sense that this was the only option.

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Speaker 1: She worked tirelessly for forty five minutes, and soon the

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Speaker 1: baby began to cry. In the nineteen forties, she began

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Speaker 1: taking classes with the Mobile County Board of Health to

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Speaker 1: secure her license and registration. Pen in hand and paper

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Speaker 1: on the desk, she sat quietly as teachers conducted their lessons.

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Speaker 1: They discussed hygiene and pre and postnatal care, the curriculum

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Speaker 1: that was already familiar to many in the classroom, but

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Speaker 1: it wasn't the hard and necessary skills that she believed

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Speaker 1: she was most gifted with, but something more spiritual, something

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Speaker 1: more ineffable, something that she would call mother wit. Annie

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Speaker 1: believed that there was this God given wisdom, her common sense,

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Speaker 1: and she relied heavily on it in her practice. By

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty nine, she was certified by the state board

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Speaker 1: and joined the professional ranks of the new medical establishment.

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Speaker 1: Annie kept working in homes, and public hospital health care

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Speaker 1: infrastructure kept expanding. Finally, hospitals allowed black mothers inside, leading

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Speaker 1: to a decrease in the demand for in home midwives.

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Speaker 1: By nineteen seventy six, the state outlawed midwiffery. Altogether, Annie

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Speaker 1: and one hundred and fifty of her peers were allowed

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Speaker 1: to continue their care, but theirs was a dying breed.

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Speaker 1: She had delivered hundreds of babies in her career and

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Speaker 1: had only lost four of them, and as a reward,

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Speaker 1: very quietly, in nineteen eighty four, she received a letter

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Speaker 1: in the mail. It was from the state of Alabama

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Speaker 1: telling her that her license and those of all her

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Speaker 1: fellow midwives were being revoked immediately. At seventy three years

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Speaker 1: of age, Annie had been the last practicing granny midwife

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Speaker 1: in Mobile County. As she would later recall, it was

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Speaker 1: one of the saddest days of her life. Annie Lee

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Speaker 1: Logan didn't go quietly. Although she never practiced again, She

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Speaker 1: met a young student, Catherine Clark, in the summer of

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four. Together they created Annie's autobiography, entitled Mother Wit,

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Speaker 1: an Alabama midwife Story. Doing so helped to capture the

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Speaker 1: story of Annie's life, as well as an institution and

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Speaker 1: a community of healers that was all but eradicated. Annie

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Speaker 1: passed away in nineteen ninety five, and although midwiffery is

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Speaker 1: still illegal in Alabama, she had lived long enough to

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Speaker 1: see the tides change. With the social upheaval of the

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and seventies, layman whiffery began to make a comeback.

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Speaker 1: The fight for bodily autonomy was a hot issue during

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Speaker 1: the surge of the women's movements, and of course it

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Speaker 1: made sense that focus landed on pregnant and birthing bodies.

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Speaker 1: Those who sought to decriminalize midwiffery knew that a sacred,

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Speaker 1: ancient practice had been sent underground. They wanted choices and

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Speaker 1: a holistic kind of healthcare that treated them as so

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Speaker 1: much more than faceless numbers on a hospital chart. Today,

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Speaker 1: midwiffery is legal to practice in all fifty states, although

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Speaker 1: home births still remain illegal in seven of them. Even still, today,

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Speaker 1: more than ninety eight percent of births in the United

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Speaker 1: States take place in hospitals. But shockingly, a set of

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Speaker 1: twenty eighteen statistics tell us that the maternal mortality rates

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Speaker 1: in the US is higher than it was in nineteen ten.

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Speaker 1: Among forty nine other developed countries across the world, we

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Speaker 1: come in first place with our death rates. That's a

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Speaker 1: top spot that comes with no prize, just a whole

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Speaker 1: lot of justified scorn. Today we are in the throes

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Speaker 1: of a maternal healthcare crisis, one that continues to disproportionately

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Speaker 1: affect the same communities of women that Annie had dedicated

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Speaker 1: her life to serving. My wife and I have a

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Speaker 1: deep connection to the world of midwiffery. We know from

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Speaker 1: multiple berths just how important their advice was in preparing

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Speaker 1: for the big day, as well as their stay hetty

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Speaker 1: hand and calming spirits in the delivery room. Midwives are

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Speaker 1: guardian angels, and to learn about the way our society

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Speaker 1: has treated them is honestly beyond heartbreaking, but in their

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Speaker 1: stories we can still find hope. And if you stick

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Speaker 1: around through this brief sponsor break, my teammate Robin Miniter

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Speaker 1: will tell you one more tale of a healer finding

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Speaker 1: their place in the world.

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Speaker 2: Stenny Slawa Lishtinsky was born May eighth, eighteen ninety six

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Speaker 2: in Poland. Her family was poor and Catholic, and her

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Speaker 2: childhood was marked by war. Her father had been drafted

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Speaker 2: into military service, which left Stennyslava's mother to take care

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Speaker 2: of the family, the home, and the finances. They moved

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Speaker 2: around some, spending a few years in Rhodijonio before returning

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Speaker 2: to their home in the city of Wuch. By nineteen seventeen,

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Speaker 2: Stony Slawa was married. By nineteen twenty three, she and

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Speaker 2: her husband, Bronislau, had three children. She spent the next

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Speaker 2: few years raising their family and finishing her Midwi freequel horses.

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Speaker 2: Her life was full. Delivering babies brought so much joy

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Speaker 2: to the families that she worked with, but this happiness

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Speaker 2: wouldn't last. On September first, nineteen thirty nine, Germany invaded Poland.

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Speaker 2: Nazi forces spread throughout the country, establishing ghettos for Jews,

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Speaker 2: the Roma and other designated enemies. On September eighth, the

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Speaker 2: Nazis arrived, in which they quickly got to work rearranging

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Speaker 2: the city and everyone who lived there, eventually erecting the

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Speaker 2: second largest ghetto in all of Nazi occupied Europe. The

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Speaker 2: neighborhood where Stanny Slava had been born and raised was

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Speaker 2: turned into a hell on earth. Fences were erected and

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Speaker 2: barbed wire lined them. Armed Nazi troops patrolled the perimeters.

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Speaker 2: Sanni Slava watched as her neighbors, patients, and friends were corralled, starved,

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Speaker 2: and abused. In the bright light of day, she secretly

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Speaker 2: slipped them food and falsified documents from the outside, risking

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Speaker 2: her own life. As part of the resistance, The Nazis

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Speaker 2: continued to close in. Stanislava's family was arrested in nineteen

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Speaker 2: forty three. Two of her sons were sent to a

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Speaker 2: concentration camp. She and her daughter, Sylvia, who was as

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Speaker 2: a medical student, were both sent to Auschwitz Berkanew. Stanny

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Speaker 2: Slawa Lishtinski became inmate number four, one, three, five five.

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Speaker 2: She also became the camp's midwife. The Nazis had a

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Speaker 2: vested interest in the fertility and reproduction of their captives.

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Speaker 2: They enlisted Stanny Slava to help do their bidding. Day

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Speaker 2: and night Standy Slava took care of the imprisoned women

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Speaker 2: in one of the barracks. The thirty bunks nearest to

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Speaker 2: the stove made up what was known as the maternity ward.

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Speaker 2: The stove, which was shaped more like a trough, ran

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Speaker 2: like a line through the building center, but it was

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Speaker 2: rarely used for warming. Instead, these troughs became places for

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Speaker 2: laboring women to lay. It was a frigid, horror filled

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Speaker 2: place that she later wrote about, being infested with bold,

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Speaker 2: hungry rats, slicked with bodily fluids, and lacking any access

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Speaker 2: to basic hygiene or comfort that would keep these mothers

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Speaker 2: and their babies safe. The Nazis sentenced every newborn baby

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Speaker 2: to death. It was ordered that the baby's umbilical cord

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Speaker 2: was not even to be cut, but rather immediately thrown

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Speaker 2: with the placenta into the trash. Later, the babies were

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Speaker 2: ordered to be drowned. A sign to complete this deed

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Speaker 2: was a disgraced midwife who had been convicted of infanticide.

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Speaker 2: While still on the outside, mothers often silently bore witness

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Speaker 2: to this entire atrocity. Even still, standy Slava did everything

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Speaker 2: she could to provide these mothers and newborns with comfort,

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Speaker 2: if only for a short while. She would pray over

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Speaker 2: each baby, baptizing it with warm water and herbs. She

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Speaker 2: would swaddle the baby in any extra sheet that could

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Speaker 2: be traded for, and created diapers from torn strips of fabric.

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Speaker 2: After mid nineteen forty three, a pivot happened. Non Jewish

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Speaker 2: newborns were now permitted to live. The ESSSS would later

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Speaker 2: decide if a baby could pass as Aryan, it would

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Speaker 2: be rehomed and Germanized. Standy Slava secretly tattooed these babies

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Speaker 2: and communicated as much to their mothers in the hopes

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Speaker 2: that they could one day be reunited. In all, standy

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Speaker 2: Slava delivered more than three thousand infants. Remarkably, she never

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Speaker 2: lost a single mother or child during birth. Each baby

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Speaker 2: was born alive and healthy, and despite the world they

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Speaker 2: were entering into, they were ready to live. According to

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Speaker 2: her counting, over fifteen hundred of these infants were drowned

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Speaker 2: at the hands of the SS. Another one thousand died

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Speaker 2: of cold and starvation. A few hundred were transported for placement.

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Speaker 2: Only thirty survived everything. When the war ended and Auschwitz

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Speaker 2: was liberated, Standi Slawer returned home to Wooch. There she

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Speaker 2: continued to serve as a midwife to her community until

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Speaker 2: she retired in nineteen fifty eight, and before she died

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Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy four, she got to once again meet

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Speaker 2: some of the children whose lives she had saved. Her

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Speaker 2: surviving son, who later became a doctor, was quoted as saying,

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Speaker 2: for her, the child was the greatest miracle in the world,

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Speaker 2: and the act of giving birth was nature's greatest biological exultation.

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Speaker 2: In the face of unspeakable horrors and the threat of

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Speaker 2: immediate death, standyslaw Was still found it within her to

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Speaker 2: fight for life. She never gave up on her mission

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Speaker 2: to care for those in humanity's darkest hours.

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Speaker 1: Grimm and Mild Presents Bedside Manners was executive produced by

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Speaker 1: Aaron Mankey and narrated by Aaron Manke and Robin Minitter.

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Speaker 1: For this season was provided by Robin Miniter, with research

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Speaker 1: by Sam Alberty, Taylor Haggerdorn and Robin Miniter. Production assistants

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Speaker 1: was provided by Josh Thayin, Jesse Funk, Alex Williams, and

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Speaker 1: Matt Frederick. You can learn more about this show, the

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Speaker 1: Grimm and Mild team, and all the other podcasts that

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Speaker 1: we make over at grimandmild dot com, and, as always,

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Speaker 1: thanks for listening