The Midwife of Auschwitz

Ester is a second main character and the protégé of Ana. Ester, a young Jewish nurse, is the older of the two daughters of Ruth and Mordecai Abrams. Protecting the safety of Leah, Ester’s 15-year-old sister, is a major concern of the first part of narrative. The novel begins with a storybook, slowly developing romance between Ester and Filip Pasternak. The pace of their relationship speeds up swiftly when the Germans invade Poland, and Filip proposes to Ester that day.

Inexperienced and uncertain as a caregiver, Ester’s abilities and confidence increase by necessity when, confined to the Łơdź Jewish ghetto, she becomes one of the few medical providers. She also serves as the family breadwinner when the Nazis refuse to allow Jewish tailors to work. Like Ana, she observes the atrocities and indignations foisted upon Jews in the ghetto, though through the lens of personal experience. Nazis roust her patients from hospital beds to send them to concentration camps and commit a summary execution before her eyes. Though intellectually recognizing the danger of what she is doing, Ester cannot stop raging against those who come to relocate her mother, Ruth. As a result, Nazis arrest Ester, and she ends up with Ana on a train to Birkenau.

Working with Ana to provide maternity care for a multitude of women in Birkenau, Ester learns she also is pregnant. In an effort to protect her newborn daughter, Filipa—nicknamed Pippa—Ester develops a process of tattooing blonde babies with their mother’s registration number before the Nazis steal them. After she is liberated and reunited with Filip, she commits to finding her daughter. Ester shares many qualities with Ana, including courage, compassion, and resilience, but she is also an innovator.

Filip, a young Jewish tailor in Łơdź, is the only child of Benjamin and Sarah Pasternak. He falls in love with Ester the first time he sees her eating lunch on the steps of the cathedral and proposes to her when the Nazis invade Poland. A talented tailor, Filip procures black market work for himself several times during the narrative, first altering clothes for sequestered Jewish citizens, then for the wives of Nazi officers while he is interred in the Chelmno concentration camp.

Separated and incommunicado from Ester for the majority of the narrative, Filip has no idea of Ester’s location or condition beyond knowing that she rode the train to Auschwitz with Ruth. He does not know that they have a daughter who has been stolen by the Nazis. Wounded when he escapes from Chelmno, Filip joins the Polish Resistance and fights until the end of the war, receiving a serious head wound. His recovery from that injury prolongs his delay in returning to Łơdź. When Filip and Ester reunite, the only aspect of their relationship remaining unchanged is the passion they feel for one another.

Bartek, a printer, is the husband of Ana. He is a jovial, relaxed man who is seldom upset. On several occasions, Bartek calms situations that might spin out of control into violence. A faithful Christian and Polish patriot, Bartek works with the resistance to produce false identification papers for Jews to help them escape the Łơdź ghetto.

Bartek and his eldest son, Bronislaw, are not at home when the SS arrive to arrest Ana and her younger sons. He manages to send Ana several packages that include brief, concealed messages while she remains interred at Birkenau. Ana does not learn until after the war that Bartek was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Uprising who died fighting to liberate Poland.

Naomi is a young woman of Jewish and Greek descent whose family resides in Salonika. She meets and befriends Ester and Ana in Birkenau. Though she claims to be 16 years old, the other women believe she is actually younger. Naomi possesses a bubbly, optimistic personality that can elevate the mood of Ester and Ana when they feel despair. Naomi works in the Kanada, the vast storage facility at Birkenau where Nazis keep the personal goods of arriving prisoners.

Naomi has a relationship with an SS officer who provides her with food and trinkets she shares with her friends. She understands the parameters of their relationship and thus feels little surprise when she becomes pregnant. Quick-witted, Naomi bribes Klara to prevent her from whipping Ester to death. In return, Ester creates a ruse to convince Klara that Naomi’s child is stillborn. When almost all the remaining women march away in the frigid dead of night, Naomi conceals herself under a pile of bodies so she can remain with Ester, Ana, and her infant son, Isaac. Naomi eventually rejoins her family in Salonika and writes to Ester, inviting her to visit them.