Memoirs of a Midwife in Hungary

Is there anything in this world more precious than life itself? It follows then that the most gracious profession is to aid an expecting mother in the hours of her giving birth to a new life. Maria Szecsi practiced midwifery in the Great Hungarian Plain with the greatest diligence and self-devotion for almost thirty years. Her memoirs shed light on the rural life of 1930-40s Hungary and on the struggles and conditions of its people. "I never felt afraid; my only concern was to arrive in time!" The memoirist wrote these words referring to the occasions when she hurried in freezing snow, on pathless fields, in pitch dark, alone on the way to distant farms to provide aid to expecting mothers.

But after all the hardships and struggles, could anybody really feel afraid while serving as an aid at the most gracious moment of the renascence of life and future?