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

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.