Entitled The Midwife, the film was screened on Wednesday at the Polish Consulate General in Barcelona, in cooperation with the Honorary Consulate of Israel, the Polish Institute in Madrid and the Centre for Tourism in Catalonia, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Among the guests at the screening were the docudrama’s director Maria Stachurska, who is a relative of Leszczyńska, Poland’s Consul General in Barcelona Ilona Kałdońska, and Israel’s Honorary Consul Yosef David Sanchez-Molina Rubin, officials said.
A packed audience also included diplomats from many other countries, representatives of Barcelona’s Polish and Jewish communities, as well as the Poland and Barcelona football star Robert Lewandowski with wife Anna, who is Leszczyńska’s great-great-niece, the PAP news agency reported.
The Midwife of Auschwitz
A midwife by profession, Leszczyńska was arrested by the Nazi German secret police Gestapo in February 1943 for helping ghettoised Jews in the German-occupied central Polish city of Łódź.
As punishment, Leszczyńska was sent, together with her daughter, to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
While there, despite inhumane conditions and against the orders of the camp authorities, she put her midwife skills to heroic use, secretly delivering over 3,000 children of fellow inmates, without losing a single child, according to historians.
The Midwife draws on the accounts of Auschwitz survivors and archival material to tell, in partly dramatised form, the story of this extraordinary woman, the PAP news agency reported.
‘A powerful message'
The film’s director, Maria Stachurska, told PAP that she believed Leszczyńska “drew her strength from her faith, from her trust in God and from prayer.”
Stachurska added that "in the current times, when selfishness rules,” Leszczyńska’s story carried “a powerful message.”
Maria Stachurska PAP/Roman Zawistowski
“Maybe the meaning lies in saving someone, in sacrificing something, in giving something from yourself,” the filmmaker said.
Meanwhile, Poland’s consul general in Barcelona, Ilona Kałdońska, noted that on March 24 Poland marks National Remembrance Day for Poles Who Saved Jews.
She added that The Midwife “tells the story of one such heroic person.”
Israel’s consul general, Yosef David Sanchez-Molina Rubin, announced the launch of efforts to grant Leszczyńska the title of Righteous Among the Nations.
He noted that Poles accounted for more than a quarter of the recipients of the distinction, which is granted by Israel to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from the Holocaust.
In 1992, the Catholic Church launched the process to beatify Stanisława Leszczyńska, the PAP news agency reported.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, niezalezna.pl
