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    The Dressmakers of Auschwitz: The True Story of the Women Who Sewed to Survive
    The Dressmakers of Auschwitz: The True Story of the Women Who Sewed to Survive
    The Dressmakers of Auschwitz: The True Story of the Women Who Sewed to Survive
    Audiobook12 hours

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

    Written by Lucy Adlington

    Narrated by Lucy Adlington

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    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.

    Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateSep 14, 2021
    ISBN9780063030954
    Author

    Lucy Adlington

    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.

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    Reviews for The Dressmakers of Auschwitz

    4.5/5

    108 ratings6 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A significant contribution to history. A remarkable combination of research and interviews. A must read interested in European history and culture.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Amazing book … beautiful written details… beautiful, courageous ladies and men’s …

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The Book was written with the sorrow of the events being told.
      So many lives and the pain that was imposed on them. One can only imagine the inhumane punishment one human can inflict upon another. The author left nothing to the imagination of the reader.
      Ordinarily I would not have read a book in this genre……being a
      tailoress myself I was intrigued to find out just how this was accomplished in times such as it was happening in a location and time as that.
      Well written and the narrator did a fine job.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      The dressmakers of Auschwitz: the true story of the women who sewed to survive by Lucy Adington
      (Scribd audiobook)

      The true story of 25 young inmates (majority of them Jewish) selected to work in a dedicated workshop to make beautiful clothes for high ranking Nazis while being held in Auschwitz death camp.
      The story of how they survived is remarkable but the telling of it in my opinion only was not the greatest. To me their stories were rushed and their time working in the actual workshop was limited. More was told about their lives after the war and after the salon closed. I have to say again Thur resilience was extraordinary but personally I was not a fan of the writing style.
    • 3/5
      Lucy Adington retells the horrors of the Holocaust with personal stories of a small group of women who survived due to their sewing skills. The Germans needed haute couture amid World War II and turned to captured Jewish women in Auschwitz. Adington captures the background of the Nazi movement in many chapters, many a little too many before turning to the group of Jewish concentration women forced to sew for the Germans. Adington’s story presents many photographs of the women and the conditions of their existence. Loyalty and friendship shine through all the atrocities of Auschwitz.
    • 2/5
      Somehow I was unable to finish this. While I want to understand the time and place, and want no one to forget this, just the horror of those Nazi women being able to make themselves believe that this was in any way something to be involved in. Maybe disgust is a better word for taking over someone's (a victim of the treachery of those camps) clothing for fashion purposes was something I just couldn't read about. I want to applaud those camp women who survived in spite of it all and for Lucy Addington for her research into this story.