Speaker 1: Heinrich was having a bad time. For two years, he
Speaker 1: had been an inquisitor in southern Germany and was involved
Speaker 1: in the witch trials that had begun to sweep western Europe.
Speaker 1: But Heinrich ended up not being a good fit for
Speaker 1: his role. Although he had a profound sense of duty,
Speaker 1: he lacked any sense of professionalism. For one thing, he
Speaker 1: had become deeply obsessed with the sex life of one
Speaker 1: of the women he accused and brought to trial. It
Speaker 1: was all too much, and his unhinged displays were deeply embarrassing.
Speaker 1: Because of this, the bishop, his boss, set free every
Speaker 1: last woman on trial that day, fired Heinrich and publicly
Speaker 1: declared him to be insane. Heinrich, who had been looking
Speaker 1: forward to making a name for himself, was mortified, inconsolable.
Speaker 1: Even The next course of action, it was decided, would
Speaker 1: be to put his truths down on paper. He would
Speaker 1: write a book. The year was fourteen eighty six, and
Speaker 1: it would be a clap that would echo for centuries
Speaker 1: to come. Heinrich took to his study and got out
Speaker 1: his ink his order of business created a guidebook that
Speaker 1: would help solve for this world that he felt was
Speaker 1: perverted by women. He wrote hundreds of pages on how
Speaker 1: to spot treacherous ones, on how women often caroused with
Speaker 1: the devil, on how they practiced witchcraft and were generally
Speaker 1: up to evil doings. It acted as a guide for
Speaker 1: identifying witches and suggested different kinds of torture, prosecution strategies,
Speaker 1: and punishments for those convicted of the charges outlined in
Speaker 1: its pages. The ones he cautioned his readers to fear
Speaker 1: the most, he wrote, were the concubines, domineering spouses, and midwives.
Speaker 1: The latter, he wrote, was the worst of the worst.
Speaker 1: Heinrich wrote that midwives not only killed babies at birth,
Speaker 1: but hungered to drink their blood. He claimed that midwives
Speaker 1: were in the business of actively recruiting young women to
Speaker 1: join their ranks, and had the best luck with ones
Speaker 1: who were already morally corrupt by signing over their souls
Speaker 1: to the devil, giving over the souls of the babies
Speaker 1: in their charge. He believed that Europe was under spiritual siege,
Speaker 1: and if only people knew the satanic midwives could be stopped.
Speaker 1: It was a madman's treatise with an academic flourish, and
Speaker 1: Heinrich Cramer wanted to get his writings into as many
Speaker 1: hands as possible. The advent of the printing press indeed
Speaker 1: allowed this to happen, spreading copies of his Malleus Maleficarum
Speaker 1: far and wide. The book was condemned by top theologians
Speaker 1: and decried by the Catholic Church. They saw these accusations
Speaker 1: as reprehensible and suggestions of torture to illicit confession as unethical. Midwives,
Speaker 1: after all, were often the local healers. They were in
Speaker 1: the business of helping people get well, birthing babies, and
Speaker 1: even legally allowed to care for their spiritual wellbeing through baptism.
Speaker 1: But still the book gained momentum in the secular courts
Speaker 1: and with lay people who could afford to purchase it.
Speaker 1: By sixteen oh four, King James the First declared that
Speaker 1: he would rather his child was baptized by an ape
Speaker 1: as by a woman, repeating Heinrich's idea that midwives were
Speaker 1: in the business of trickery and soul stealing. But to
Speaker 1: some it was clear that it wasn't the souls of
Speaker 1: a nation that were under attack, but rather the midwives themselves,
Speaker 1: the very people who tended to their survival I'm Aaron Manke,
Speaker 1: and welcome to bedside manners. Giving birth is an incredible feat.
Speaker 1: Of course, I haven't done it myself, but I hear
Speaker 1: that words sometimes fall short in describing how profound of
Speaker 1: an experience it truly is. And for as long as
Speaker 1: women have been giving birth, midwives have been present. The
Speaker 1: word quite literally means with women. Written and oral traditions
Speaker 1: across ancient cultures affirm the importance of midwives in their societies.
Speaker 1: In ancient Rome and Greece, the formally educated midas wives
Speaker 1: were held in such high esteem that the writings were
Speaker 1: often cited by male physicians. We see reverence for them
Speaker 1: in Egyptian carvings. Communities have long looked to their midwives,
Speaker 1: who were often versed in all matters of life and death.
Speaker 1: They worked in the homes of expectant mothers or made
Speaker 1: private spaces for them to come give birth. To be
Speaker 1: a midwife was in honor. It was long a position
Speaker 1: of power, respect and expertise. So it was a curious
Speaker 1: moment when in sixteen fifty eight English physician Perceval Willoughby
Speaker 1: sheepishly crawled on his hands and knees into the birthing
Speaker 1: room of an expectant mother. Had the laboring patient been
Speaker 1: made aware of his arrival, she probably would have been horrified.
Speaker 1: Having a man in the birthing chamber was considered indecent.
Speaker 1: Perceval's own daughter, a midwife, had asked him to advise
Speaker 1: on what she believed to be a particularly difficult case
Speaker 1: of a baby in the breach position. The record tells
Speaker 1: us that he merely took a quick look, supposedly unnoticed,
Speaker 1: and slunk away. Perceval gave his thoughts on the baby's position,
Speaker 1: but he was wrong. How could he have known about
Speaker 1: what the baby was doing by simply looking from across
Speaker 1: the room. But still his advice was sought. Perceval's story
Speaker 1: was emblematic of the moment you see beyond that birthing room,
Speaker 1: something strange was happening. Although midwiffery had long been the
Speaker 1: domain of women, men were beginning to encroach in what
Speaker 1: amounted to a business opportunity. Women had the market cornered,
Speaker 1: and they saw that there was money to be made.
Speaker 1: Perceval and his medical school cronies got into the business
Speaker 1: of publishing midwiffery manuals. They were going to great lengths
Speaker 1: to assert their authority over the long standing female domain,
Speaker 1: even though this particular striving was far out of step
Speaker 1: with the social norms. Then, in sixteen seventy one a
Speaker 1: response came. A woman named Jane Sharp published The Midwives Book,
Speaker 1: or the Whole Art of Midwiffery Discovered in England. At
Speaker 1: almost one hundred thousand words long, the book was revolutionary.
Speaker 1: Jane's book documented actual practice, anecdotes and observations of birth,
Speaker 1: wrote expertly about anatomy and sex, conception and disease, and
Speaker 1: pregnancy and delivery. What made this text so novel was
Speaker 1: that it was written in plain language for everyone. You
Speaker 1: didn't have to have a medical degree to understand it.
Speaker 1: Her voice was authoritative and her stance was confident. For millennia,
Speaker 1: women's knowledge of bodies and how to care for them
Speaker 1: had been passed down orally kept in diaries or shared
Speaker 1: in letters, but never had such a grand treatise been
Speaker 1: made so widely available. It was an answer to all
Speaker 1: of the men who were writing and selling midwifery books
Speaker 1: without having ever delivered a baby. In the pages of
Speaker 1: her book, she asserted the rights of herself and other
Speaker 1: women to continue doing birth work. It's possible that she
Speaker 1: sensed what was coming for midwives and edging out by
Speaker 1: the medical establishment. She wasn't going down without a fight, though,
Speaker 1: so she set out to prove that the pen was
Speaker 1: indeed just as mighty as the sword. Two centuries later,
Speaker 1: and across the world, in America's Ozark Mountains, a granny
Speaker 1: woman caught a baby. This wasn't her first and surely
Speaker 1: wouldn't be her last. Laboring women always called upon her
Speaker 1: when their birthing time drew near. She was a mother
Speaker 1: many times over, and a grandmother too. She was an
Speaker 1: auntie beloved by her neighbors, young and old, and knew
Speaker 1: everyone and everything that lived within her community. From her
Speaker 1: gardens and woods, she gathered native plants, knowing that through
Speaker 1: the alchemy of heat and time, she could turn them
Speaker 1: into soothing potions. She loved the sap from sweetgum trees
Speaker 1: and the leaves of yellow dock for teas. She learned
Speaker 1: these things from her mother and from her grandmother. Carrying
Speaker 1: on a long vocation of community care, our granny Woman
Speaker 1: and her sisters all carried with them the midwifing traditions
Speaker 1: of their enslaved ancestors. During America's enslavement of African people,
Speaker 1: The granny woman held a special place in plantation society.
Speaker 1: From the perspective of her captors, it was her job
Speaker 1: to keep her fellow slaves healthy and to ensure their
Speaker 1: fertility in order to make more enslaved bodies for her
Speaker 1: fellow captives. She was there to protect them with her
Speaker 1: deep held knowledge of both plant medicine and the female body.
Speaker 1: The reputation of such women was held in high esteem
Speaker 1: in this social order, which allowed her to occupy a
Speaker 1: unique liminal space. She might be sought out for medical
Speaker 1: care from her white owners, or be allowed to travel
Speaker 1: to a birth on a neighboring plantation. She might attend
Speaker 1: to blackbirths as well as white ones. With the Emancipation
Speaker 1: Proclamation of eighteen sixty three, the formerly enslaved population did
Speaker 1: what they could to establish themselves in a hostile land.
Speaker 1: These black midwives entered into the free market, free to
Speaker 1: practice how and on who they chose. Midwives worked across
Speaker 1: the country and importantly held down their posts in poor
Speaker 1: and rural areas. They provided crucial gaps in community care.
Speaker 1: White physicians, many who had recently come back from training
Speaker 1: at European medical schools felt threatened by these midwives. As
Speaker 1: medicine began to gel into a professional class, those in
Speaker 1: power had a lot of interest in gatekeeping. These newly
Speaker 1: minted physicians had their economic security to protect. By the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, the schools would begin to teach obstetrics,
Speaker 1: which finds its roots in the modern Latin word which
Speaker 1: means quite literally midwife. Perhaps they found this term to
Speaker 1: be more academic. In doing so, they were intentionally distancing
Speaker 1: themselves from the more informal, long women held tradition of delivery.
Speaker 1: It was an attempt to edge out women from their
Speaker 1: profession and gain more of the market share that was
Speaker 1: women's bodies. But in nineteen ten, a landmark publication arrived.
Speaker 1: The Flexner Report was a study of American medical education.
Speaker 1: The report revealed a high maternal mortality rate. It situated
Speaker 1: midwifery firmly in its crosshairs and recommended that birth should
Speaker 1: be treated as a medical event, so hospitalizing every mother
Speaker 1: and abolishing midwiffery. This would create a steady streat of
Speaker 1: revenue for new hospitals. At this point, about half of
Speaker 1: the births in America were attended to by physicians and
Speaker 1: the other half by midwives. The following year, an obstetric's
Speaker 1: professor in New York was quoted in saying that midwives
Speaker 1: are and I quote dark, dirty, ignorant, untrained, incompetent women.
Speaker 1: Evil though necessary, evil that must be controlled. We must
Speaker 1: save our women. By nineteen fifteen, doctor Joseph de Ley,
Speaker 1: the most famous obstetrician of the day, suggested that birth
Speaker 1: be viewed as a dangerous pathological process that must be
Speaker 1: controlled to the highest degree. He believed that every woman
Speaker 1: in labor needed medical intervention, even when the intervention itself
Speaker 1: left long lasting damage to the mother and child. He
Speaker 1: invited the use of forceps, restraints, episiotomies, and drug cocktails
Speaker 1: to knock laboring mothers unconscious. He stripped humanity from childbirth,
Speaker 1: and to many it seemed that modernity had finally arrived.
Speaker 1: By nineteen seventeen, a national debate and dias desire for
Speaker 1: governmental response had been triggered. They needed to do something
Speaker 1: about the American midwife problem. In nineteen twenty one, the
Speaker 1: Shepherd Tuner Act was passed by Congress, which provided federal
Speaker 1: funding for maternity and childcare. The states were required to
Speaker 1: match these federal dollars, but without necessary health care infrastructure,
Speaker 1: many rural places heartily welcomed midwiffree to fill in the gaps.
Speaker 1: States worked towards regulating their practices in the meantime, requiring
Speaker 1: training and licenses in order for them to legally work,
Speaker 1: but none of this made birth safer. In fact, until
Speaker 1: the invention of antibiotics in nineteen twenty eight, maternal and
Speaker 1: infant hospital deaths kept rising, as did the incidents of
Speaker 1: death from birth injuries. America saw a forty one percent
Speaker 1: increase in infant mortality due to injury between nineteen fifteen
Speaker 1: and nineteen twenty nine, primarily due to invasive obstetrical interference.
Speaker 1: By nineteen thirty five, less than fifteen percent of American
Speaker 1: births were attended by midwives. Practitioners were working in the poor,
Speaker 1: black and rural South, a place where many white doctors
Speaker 1: chose not to go. But it was also around this
Speaker 1: time in rural Alabama that a very special baby was born.
Speaker 1: Annie Lee Logan came into the world as the fourteenth
Speaker 1: child of Martha and Lenn Rodgers. She was born around
Speaker 1: nineteen ten near the community of Sweetwater. Her family's land
Speaker 1: was beautiful as the name suggested. Her parents owned it,
Speaker 1: and even though they were cash poor, they lived in
Speaker 1: abundance among their fruit orchards, rice fields, and vegetable gardens.
Speaker 1: As Annie got older, she began to experience fainting spells.
Speaker 1: These kept her from working her family's fields and gardens,
Speaker 1: but they gave her access to another world. She went
Speaker 1: off with her mother to deliver local babies. Annie was
Speaker 1: curious about everything that she saw and cared for her
Speaker 1: baby dolls just as well as her mother cared for
Speaker 1: new infants. By the time Annie was about eight years old,
Speaker 1: the state legislature began to crack down on non licensed midwives,
Speaker 1: which is to say all of them. The state of
Speaker 1: Alabama soon established a regulatory board which managed all registration
Speaker 1: and training. And while this seems like a sensible chapter
Speaker 1: in the March toward progress, the truth was a bit
Speaker 1: more complicated. You see, America didn't have a midwife problem
Speaker 1: like the American Medical Association claim. Rather, it was the
Speaker 1: midwives who had a problem on their hands. The issue
Speaker 1: here was one of inclusion. Long ago, Europe had established
Speaker 1: midwiffery schools and accepted them as integral parts of the
Speaker 1: medical field. But this was not true for America. Instead,
Speaker 1: American medical schools refused to accept women into their ranks,
Speaker 1: let alone black women. They wanted to replace all midwives
Speaker 1: with male doctors, many of whom lacked functional knowledge and
Speaker 1: culturally competent care. After her mother died when Annie was
Speaker 1: about eighteen years old, she went to work to support
Speaker 1: her family. She took up work as a domestic servant.
Speaker 1: A few years later, already having had a child of
Speaker 1: her own, she began to consider what it might mean
Speaker 1: to her to become a midwife. It was when she
Speaker 1: received heaping praise while helping a local doctor deliver her
Speaker 1: employer's child that she realized that her life's course had
Speaker 1: already been charted. She took up work as a granny woman,
Speaker 1: just as her mother had been. Annie was working in
Speaker 1: rural communities at a time when white doctors refused to
Speaker 1: deliver black babies. She was one of thousands who continued
Speaker 1: to work across Alabama. Often, the families that Annie and
Speaker 1: her fellow midwives worked with were living in deep poverty.
Speaker 1: Even still, these birth workers considered their path a calling
Speaker 1: and found ways to barter and give their time beyond
Speaker 1: delivering children. They provided care for the household. They cooked
Speaker 1: and cleaned, and helped prepare for the baby's arrival. They
Speaker 1: prayed with scared parents and wiped the laboring mother's brow.
Speaker 1: Unlike the medical doctors of her day, who wished to
Speaker 1: expedite childbirth by any means necessary, Annie made sure that
Speaker 1: she didn't rush it. She would later recall a birth
Speaker 1: she attended alongside a supervisor. A mother had gone into
Speaker 1: labor with twins. The first child was born, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't breathing. Her supervisor set the baby aside, assuming he
Speaker 1: was dead, as she assisted the second child from the
Speaker 1: birth canal. Annie, having never been trained in mouth to
Speaker 1: mouth resuscitation, had a sense that this was the only option.
Speaker 1: She worked tirelessly for forty five minutes, and soon the
Speaker 1: baby began to cry. In the nineteen forties, she began
Speaker 1: taking classes with the Mobile County Board of Health to
Speaker 1: secure her license and registration. Pen in hand and paper
Speaker 1: on the desk, she sat quietly as teachers conducted their lessons.
Speaker 1: They discussed hygiene and pre and postnatal care, the curriculum
Speaker 1: that was already familiar to many in the classroom, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't the hard and necessary skills that she believed
Speaker 1: she was most gifted with, but something more spiritual, something
Speaker 1: more ineffable, something that she would call mother wit. Annie
Speaker 1: believed that there was this God given wisdom, her common sense,
Speaker 1: and she relied heavily on it in her practice. By
Speaker 1: nineteen forty nine, she was certified by the state board
Speaker 1: and joined the professional ranks of the new medical establishment.
Speaker 1: Annie kept working in homes, and public hospital health care
Speaker 1: infrastructure kept expanding. Finally, hospitals allowed black mothers inside, leading
Speaker 1: to a decrease in the demand for in home midwives.
Speaker 1: By nineteen seventy six, the state outlawed midwiffery. Altogether, Annie
Speaker 1: and one hundred and fifty of her peers were allowed
Speaker 1: to continue their care, but theirs was a dying breed.
Speaker 1: She had delivered hundreds of babies in her career and
Speaker 1: had only lost four of them, and as a reward,
Speaker 1: very quietly, in nineteen eighty four, she received a letter
Speaker 1: in the mail. It was from the state of Alabama
Speaker 1: telling her that her license and those of all her
Speaker 1: fellow midwives were being revoked immediately. At seventy three years
Speaker 1: of age, Annie had been the last practicing granny midwife
Speaker 1: in Mobile County. As she would later recall, it was
Speaker 1: one of the saddest days of her life. Annie Lee
Speaker 1: Logan didn't go quietly. Although she never practiced again, She
Speaker 1: met a young student, Catherine Clark, in the summer of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four. Together they created Annie's autobiography, entitled Mother Wit,
Speaker 1: an Alabama midwife Story. Doing so helped to capture the
Speaker 1: story of Annie's life, as well as an institution and
Speaker 1: a community of healers that was all but eradicated. Annie
Speaker 1: passed away in nineteen ninety five, and although midwiffery is
Speaker 1: still illegal in Alabama, she had lived long enough to
Speaker 1: see the tides change. With the social upheaval of the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and seventies, layman whiffery began to make a comeback.
Speaker 1: The fight for bodily autonomy was a hot issue during
Speaker 1: the surge of the women's movements, and of course it
Speaker 1: made sense that focus landed on pregnant and birthing bodies.
Speaker 1: Those who sought to decriminalize midwiffery knew that a sacred,
Speaker 1: ancient practice had been sent underground. They wanted choices and
Speaker 1: a holistic kind of healthcare that treated them as so
Speaker 1: much more than faceless numbers on a hospital chart. Today,
Speaker 1: midwiffery is legal to practice in all fifty states, although
Speaker 1: home births still remain illegal in seven of them. Even still, today,
Speaker 1: more than ninety eight percent of births in the United
Speaker 1: States take place in hospitals. But shockingly, a set of
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen statistics tell us that the maternal mortality rates
Speaker 1: in the US is higher than it was in nineteen ten.
Speaker 1: Among forty nine other developed countries across the world, we
Speaker 1: come in first place with our death rates. That's a
Speaker 1: top spot that comes with no prize, just a whole
Speaker 1: lot of justified scorn. Today we are in the throes
Speaker 1: of a maternal healthcare crisis, one that continues to disproportionately
Speaker 1: affect the same communities of women that Annie had dedicated
Speaker 1: her life to serving. My wife and I have a
Speaker 1: deep connection to the world of midwiffery. We know from
Speaker 1: multiple berths just how important their advice was in preparing
Speaker 1: for the big day, as well as their stay hetty
Speaker 1: hand and calming spirits in the delivery room. Midwives are
Speaker 1: guardian angels, and to learn about the way our society
Speaker 1: has treated them is honestly beyond heartbreaking, but in their
Speaker 1: stories we can still find hope. And if you stick
Speaker 1: around through this brief sponsor break, my teammate Robin Miniter
Speaker 1: will tell you one more tale of a healer finding
Speaker 1: their place in the world.
Speaker 2: Stenny Slawa Lishtinsky was born May eighth, eighteen ninety six
Speaker 2: in Poland. Her family was poor and Catholic, and her
Speaker 2: childhood was marked by war. Her father had been drafted
Speaker 2: into military service, which left Stennyslava's mother to take care
Speaker 2: of the family, the home, and the finances. They moved
Speaker 2: around some, spending a few years in Rhodijonio before returning
Speaker 2: to their home in the city of Wuch. By nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 2: Stony Slawa was married. By nineteen twenty three, she and
Speaker 2: her husband, Bronislau, had three children. She spent the next
Speaker 2: few years raising their family and finishing her Midwi freequel horses.
Speaker 2: Her life was full. Delivering babies brought so much joy
Speaker 2: to the families that she worked with, but this happiness
Speaker 2: wouldn't last. On September first, nineteen thirty nine, Germany invaded Poland.
Speaker 2: Nazi forces spread throughout the country, establishing ghettos for Jews,
Speaker 2: the Roma and other designated enemies. On September eighth, the
Speaker 2: Nazis arrived, in which they quickly got to work rearranging
Speaker 2: the city and everyone who lived there, eventually erecting the
Speaker 2: second largest ghetto in all of Nazi occupied Europe. The
Speaker 2: neighborhood where Stanny Slava had been born and raised was
Speaker 2: turned into a hell on earth. Fences were erected and
Speaker 2: barbed wire lined them. Armed Nazi troops patrolled the perimeters.
Speaker 2: Sanni Slava watched as her neighbors, patients, and friends were corralled, starved,
Speaker 2: and abused. In the bright light of day, she secretly
Speaker 2: slipped them food and falsified documents from the outside, risking
Speaker 2: her own life. As part of the resistance, The Nazis
Speaker 2: continued to close in. Stanislava's family was arrested in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty three. Two of her sons were sent to a
Speaker 2: concentration camp. She and her daughter, Sylvia, who was as
Speaker 2: a medical student, were both sent to Auschwitz Berkanew. Stanny
Speaker 2: Slawa Lishtinski became inmate number four, one, three, five five.
Speaker 2: She also became the camp's midwife. The Nazis had a
Speaker 2: vested interest in the fertility and reproduction of their captives.
Speaker 2: They enlisted Stanny Slava to help do their bidding. Day
Speaker 2: and night Standy Slava took care of the imprisoned women
Speaker 2: in one of the barracks. The thirty bunks nearest to
Speaker 2: the stove made up what was known as the maternity ward.
Speaker 2: The stove, which was shaped more like a trough, ran
Speaker 2: like a line through the building center, but it was
Speaker 2: rarely used for warming. Instead, these troughs became places for
Speaker 2: laboring women to lay. It was a frigid, horror filled
Speaker 2: place that she later wrote about, being infested with bold,
Speaker 2: hungry rats, slicked with bodily fluids, and lacking any access
Speaker 2: to basic hygiene or comfort that would keep these mothers
Speaker 2: and their babies safe. The Nazis sentenced every newborn baby
Speaker 2: to death. It was ordered that the baby's umbilical cord
Speaker 2: was not even to be cut, but rather immediately thrown
Speaker 2: with the placenta into the trash. Later, the babies were
Speaker 2: ordered to be drowned. A sign to complete this deed
Speaker 2: was a disgraced midwife who had been convicted of infanticide.
Speaker 2: While still on the outside, mothers often silently bore witness
Speaker 2: to this entire atrocity. Even still, standy Slava did everything
Speaker 2: she could to provide these mothers and newborns with comfort,
Speaker 2: if only for a short while. She would pray over
Speaker 2: each baby, baptizing it with warm water and herbs. She
Speaker 2: would swaddle the baby in any extra sheet that could
Speaker 2: be traded for, and created diapers from torn strips of fabric.
Speaker 2: After mid nineteen forty three, a pivot happened. Non Jewish
Speaker 2: newborns were now permitted to live. The ESSSS would later
Speaker 2: decide if a baby could pass as Aryan, it would
Speaker 2: be rehomed and Germanized. Standy Slava secretly tattooed these babies
Speaker 2: and communicated as much to their mothers in the hopes
Speaker 2: that they could one day be reunited. In all, standy
Speaker 2: Slava delivered more than three thousand infants. Remarkably, she never
Speaker 2: lost a single mother or child during birth. Each baby
Speaker 2: was born alive and healthy, and despite the world they
Speaker 2: were entering into, they were ready to live. According to
Speaker 2: her counting, over fifteen hundred of these infants were drowned
Speaker 2: at the hands of the SS. Another one thousand died
Speaker 2: of cold and starvation. A few hundred were transported for placement.
Speaker 2: Only thirty survived everything. When the war ended and Auschwitz
Speaker 2: was liberated, Standi Slawer returned home to Wooch. There she
Speaker 2: continued to serve as a midwife to her community until
Speaker 2: she retired in nineteen fifty eight, and before she died
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy four, she got to once again meet
Speaker 2: some of the children whose lives she had saved. Her
Speaker 2: surviving son, who later became a doctor, was quoted as saying,
Speaker 2: for her, the child was the greatest miracle in the world,
Speaker 2: and the act of giving birth was nature's greatest biological exultation.
Speaker 2: In the face of unspeakable horrors and the threat of
Speaker 2: immediate death, standyslaw Was still found it within her to
Speaker 2: fight for life. She never gave up on her mission
Speaker 2: to care for those in humanity's darkest hours.
Speaker 1: Grimm and Mild Presents Bedside Manners was executive produced by
Speaker 1: Aaron Mankey and narrated by Aaron Manke and Robin Minitter.
Speaker 1: For this season was provided by Robin Miniter, with research
Speaker 1: by Sam Alberty, Taylor Haggerdorn and Robin Miniter. Production assistants
Speaker 1: was provided by Josh Thayin, Jesse Funk, Alex Williams, and
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick. You can learn more about this show, the
Speaker 1: Grimm and Mild team, and all the other podcasts that
Speaker 1: we make over at grimandmild dot com, and, as always,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening