The Dressmakers of Auschwitz: The True Story of the Women Who Sewed to Survive

by Lucy Adlington

Overview

A powerful chronicle of the women who used their sewing skills to survive the Holocaust, stitching beautiful clothes at an extraordinary fashion workshop created within one of the most notorious WWII death camps. 

At the height of the Holocaust twenty-five young inmates of the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp—mainly Jewish women and girls—were selected to design, cut, and sew beautiful fashions for elite Nazi women in a dedicated salon. It was work that they hoped would spare them from the gas chambers. 

This fashion workshop—called the Upper Tailoring Studio—was established by Hedwig Höss, the camp commandant’s wife, and patronized by the wives of SS guards and officers. Here, the dressmakers produced high-quality garments for SS social functions in Auschwitz, and for ladies from Nazi Berlin’s upper crust. 

Drawing on diverse sources—including interviews with the last surviving seamstress—The Dressmakers of Auschwitz follows the fates of these brave women. Their bonds of family and friendship not only helped them endure persecution, but also to play their part in camp resistance. Weaving the dressmakers’ remarkable experiences within the context of Nazi policies for plunder and exploitation, historian Lucy Adlington exposes the greed, cruelty, and hypocrisy of the Third Reich and offers a fresh look at a little-known chapter of World War II and the Holocaust.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063030930
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/14/2021
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	17,773
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Lucy Adlington is a British novelist and clothes historian with more than twenty years’ experience researching social history and writing fiction and nonfiction. She lives in Yorkshire, UK.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 One of the Few Who Survived 7

2 The One and Only Power 30

3 What Next, How to Continue? 56

4 The Yellow Star 87

5 The Customary Reception 111

6 You Want to Stay Alive 137

7 I Want to Live Here Till I Die 172

8 Out of Ten Thousand Women 199

9 Solidarity and Support 229

10 The Air Smells Like Burning Paper 256

11 They Want Us to Be Normal? 296

Acknowledgements 319

Illustration Credits 321

Bibliography 325

Notes on Sources 335

Index 375

Editorial Reviews

08/23/2021

Adlington (The Red Ribbon) presents the moving story of an obscure, but especially cruel, story from the Holocaust—the experiences of women who tried to survive the rigors and murderous violence of a Nazi death camp by making use of their talent for making fancy clothes. Hedwig Höss, whose husband Rudolf was in charge of Auschwitz, shared the Nazi elite’s desire to wear attractive garments. That led her to create a clothing workshop in the camp, comprised of Jewish and non-Jewish Communist seamstresses, who created beautiful fashions “for the very people who despised them as subversives and subhuman.” The clothing workers’ experiences are vividly recreated through the author’s extensive research, including interviews with Bracha Kohut, the last surviving dressmaker. Kohut, along with her colleagues, had been torn from their normal lives by the Nazis, separated from their loved ones, and forced to witness sadistic acts of cruelty. They persevered in spite of those torments, struggling to employ their needles, thread, and fabric to stay alive one day at a time, while fearing execution if a design did not sufficiently please their “clients.” Even those who feel that they’ve read enough survivor accounts will find themselves surprised and affected. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

In The Dressmakers of Auschwitz, Lucy Adlington has unveiled not one but several long-hidden histories: the tale of a group of compassionate and audacious Jewish women who sewed for their lives; the story of clothes in the Holocaust; and the history of the fashion industry in World War II. Adlington has expertly interwoven these fascinating strands into an utterly absorbing, important and unique historical read."

Judy Batalion New York Times bestselling author of The Light of Days: The Untold Story of W

"Lucy Adlington tells of the horrors of the Nazi occupation and the concentration camps from a fascinating and original angle.  She introduces us to a little known aspect of the period, highlighting the role of clothes in the grimmest of societies imaginable and giving an insight into the women who stayed alive by stitching."

Alexandra Shulman

2021-07-10
The tale of surviving the “hideous anomaly” of a fashion salon run by Hedwig Höss, the commandant’s wife.

Adlington, a British fashion historian, digs into the stories of “seamstresses who defied Nazi attempts to dehumanise and degrade them by forming the most incredible bonds of friendship and loyalty.” The author, who fictionalized this material in her young adult novel, The Red Ribbon, continues, “as needles were threaded and sewing machines whirred they made plans for resistance, and even escape.” Adlington emphasizes the importance of clothing in the making of the Nazi Aryan mystique, from the brownshirts to the swastika to the folk garments that Jews were prohibited from wearing to the high fashion that Nazi wives demanded. Several of the young seamstresses came from Bratislava, the products of devout families, and many went to school together during the 1930s as antisemitic rhetoric heated up. One of the young women, Marta Fuchs, was a trained cutter who moved to Prague in the late 1930s to pursue her dream of haute couture. At the same time, Jewish firms were increasingly subject to Aryanization. “The main goal of Aryanisation went far beyond simply causing distress and hardship,” writes the author. “The prize…was actual ownership of Jewish businesses, as well as elimination of competition.” Ultimately, Fuchs and the other women and their families were transported to labor and death camps. At Auschwitz, Höss established a salon near her villa, run largely by Fuchs, called the Upper Tailoring Studio. Fuchs incorporated in the team of seamstresses her friends and acquaintances as a way to save them from punishing labor and certain death in the gas chambers. Adlington poignantly delineates how closely clothing and dignity were linked, especially in the camps, where the women were denuded and deloused mercilessly. The author also clearly shows the sickening insouciance with which Nazi wives would plunder the camp warehouse, crammed with stolen clothes and possessions from the enslaved workers.

A fresh, moving Auschwitz survival story involving a remarkable group of women.

Kirkus Reviews

"Lucy Adlington tells of the horrors of the Nazi occupation and the concentration camps from a fascinating and original angle.  She introduces us to a little known aspect of the period, highlighting the role of clothes in the grimmest of societies imaginable and giving an insight into the women who stayed alive by stitching." — Alexandra Shulman, Former Editor in Chief of British Vogue

In The Dressmakers of Auschwitz, Lucy Adlington has unveiled not one but several long-hidden histories: the tale of a group of compassionate and audacious Jewish women who sewed for their lives; the story of clothes in the Holocaust; and the history of the fashion industry in World War II. Adlington has expertly interwoven these fascinating strands into an utterly absorbing, important and unique historical read." — Judy Batalion New York Times bestselling author of The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos

"A fresh, moving Auschwitz survival story involving a remarkable group of women." — Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

In The Dressmakers of Auschwitz, Lucy Adlington has unveiled not one but several long-hidden histories: the tale of a group of compassionate and audacious Jewish women who sewed for their lives; the story of clothes in the Holocaust; and the history of the fashion industry in World War II. Adlington has expertly interwoven these fascinating strands into an utterly absorbing, important and unique historical read."

Judy Batalion New York Times bestselling author of The Light of Our Days: The Untold Story

09/01/2021

Fashion historian Adlington brings new research to many decades of Holocaust studies with this history of the women inmates at Auschwitz-Birkenau who were made to tailor clothes and sew high fashion for Nazi Party elites. Some two dozen women were spared from the death camp's gas chambers because they could sew, Adlington writes. She interviews one of the survivors; details how the talented seamstresses came by their skills; and explains how sewing ultimately saved their lives in the concentration camp and after the war. The book gives a solid overall impression of life in Auschwitz-Birkenau (including how hierarchies were formed and how prisoners coped), and relays insights about high-ranking Nazi officers and their families, especially their wives who also benefitted from and profited off the work of the imprisoned seamstresses. Adlington posits the importance of clothing among both guards and inmates, in a rich historical narrative that relies on extensive primary sources and includes archival photographs of some of its subjects. VERDICT This book's staggering accounts of inhumanity can be difficult to read, but the incredible stories of Holocaust survivors and the lives they built during and after the war are worth it.—Amanda Ray, Iowa City P.L.

Library Journal