The Midwife of Auschwitz Quotes

“But love cannot be ravaged by guns and tanks and evil ideologies. Love cannot be cut off by distance or absence, by hunger or cold, by beatings or degradations. And love can reach out across blood, whatever the Nazis believed, and make connections that are worth a million sick ideologies.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“I can't stop the bitter laugh. The journey this morning was simple, but the years preceding it have been a tangle of hurt and pain. We have been on the sort of dark, dirty road that no one should have to tread to get to this run-down place of dwindling hope”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“We must be very, very certain of this,’ Ana told them. ‘If we join the Resistance, we may lose our lives.’ ‘And if we do not,’ Bartek replied, ‘we may lose our souls.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“You are my concert and my party, my night out and my day in. You are all I need.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“A little of her would mourn the end of the play that she’d never get to see, but the moment she was caught up in the birthing, the trivialities of a pre-written drama would be swept away in the thrill of the unfolding natural one. It was such a privilege of a job. Every time that she helped to bring a new life into the world, her soul felt as if it were witnessing the birth of the Christ child all over again and any tiredness was dispelled by the joyous miracle. What power had guns and tanks against such simple renewal?”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“The SS shifted and Grese's eyes narrowed but the singing seemed to hold them bound and not one raised their weapon. The music rose up around the emaciated women in a halo of warm, swirling breath, pouring out their humanity, their togetherness, their refusal just to lie down and die in the dirt of the Nazi regime”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“We take any baby put on the list for the Lebensborn programme and we tattoo them with their mother’s number – small and neat and somewhere it won’t be noticed by the officers. Then, when this is all over, we will have a way of identifying them, finding them, taking them back into our arms.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“she loved her boys, she had always wanted”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“must not let that stop you, child. This is a good and brave thing you are doing and God will bless you for it.’ ‘Your god or mine?’ Again the chuckle. ‘Both. He is the same figure, we just have different ways of listening to him.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“Ce n’étaient pas des Nazis mais des Allemands venus faire leur vie à Lodz paisiblement avant que les soldats débarquent et leur inculquent qu’ils étaient supérieurs aux autres. Qui n’aurait pas envie d’entendre cela ? Elle ne leur pardonnerait pas pour autant. Ce n’était peut-être pas eux qui avaient changé le nom de la ville, imposé de nouvelles lois et parqué tous les gens différents derrière des fils barbelés mais ils ne s’insurgeaient pas contre ceux qui le faisaient. Jamais ils ne disaient ‘non c’est mal, ce n’est pas chrétiens. Oh que non. Même en entonnant leurs chants de Noël, ils étaient bien contents de se trouver du bon côté d’une guerre qui allait mettre le monde à leurs pieds, quoi que cela puisse coûter aux autres.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“If we join the Resistance, we may lose our lives.’ ‘And if we do not,’ Bartek replied, ‘we may lose our souls.’ It was no competition. Together they bowed their heads to God and swore themselves to the fight against evil.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“She felt her spirits lift and looked up to the skies, searching for God. He was hard to find these days.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“Perhaps every child I birthed has left a part behind, a nub of the umbilical cord that will always make it easy for a pair of wide baby eyes to melt my heart. And perhaps every child I’ve ever helped ease onto this earth in my twenty-seven years as a midwife has affected me in the same way too.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“You did all you could. You were very brave.’ ‘But not very strong,’ she said sadly. ‘That’s not true. It’s strong to stay alive. It’s strong to still be here.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“Remember – our only weapon is to stay alive and to stay alive we must love and we must give and, I’m afraid, we must hurt.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“What was anyone working for, save another few days in this miserable non-existence?”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“was there no word for a mother who had lost her child? If you lost your husband, you were a widow, if you lost your wife you were a widower, but a parent who lost a child…?”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“are”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“Praise God, we did it.’ And as Ana looked around at the women cheering under their breaths, for fear of their captors detecting their moment of happiness, she knew that whatever happened next, this moment was to be treasured. Love would, somehow, triumph over hate. They just had to wait and to pray, and one day, surely, it would be the main gates that opened and let them out into the rainbow.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“For what was a life without a generation to lead the way and another to come behind?”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“Jesus taught her to turn the other cheek but the Nazis had come in slapping both cheeks at once and it was hard to forgive an offence when ten more were already coming at you. At times like this she felt herself more of an Old Testament Christian – yearning for fire and fury – than a New Testament one,”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“far”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“The Jewish people were earnest, kind and respectful, and that was to be valued, especially in a world in which imposing yourself on others seemed to be becoming the norm.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“but the moment she was caught up in the birthing, the trivialities of a pre-written drama would be swept away in the thrill of the unfolding natural one. It was such a privilege of a job.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“past”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“Ostpreussenstrasse,”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“It will be over, my comrades. Your suffering will end.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“A wonderful emotion is it not, love? So much more nourishing than hate.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“Hope hurt.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz

“Hate may burn brightly, but love burns far longer.”
― Anna Stuart, The Midwife of Auschwitz