“The seamstresses of Auschwitz”: how 25 girls saved themselves from the gas chambers by sewing high fashion clothes

Save yourself from the gas chambers and ovens by sewing high fashion clothes for the ladies of the Berlin Nazi elite and for the ladies of their tormentors.

This is the evocative story contained in “The seamstresses of Auschwitz” (Rizzoli, pp. 432), the story of the English author Lucy Adlington about how twenty-five girls survived the extermination camp thanks to their talent and ability.

Fashion historian, author of several novels set in the 1940s, in this first book translated into Italian, Adlington shows with an unprecedented look the horrible cruelties and contradictions of the Nazi regime. All of Eastern Europe, mostly Slovaks, except for two French, the girls who arrived at Auschwitz in 1942 worked in a room in the basement of the building that housed the administrative offices of the SS. The commander's wife, Hedwig Hoss, who had conceived the haute couture workshop, was their main client.

It's no secret that women of the Nazi elite valued clothing, "Hitler's mistress Eva Braun adored fashion to the point of having her wedding dress delivered to the burning Berlin of the last days, before the suicide. and of the German surrender. She wore it with a pair of Ferragamo shoes, "explains Adlington, but the very idea of a high-fashion tailoring for ladies in Auschwitz" represents a horrible anomaly. "

The 25 seamstresses spent their days, with a white handkerchief on their heads, cutting, sewing, designing clothes and linen non-stop. The youngest was 14 years old and they called her Gallinella, the others were around twenty years old. The two French were not Jews, but the Communists Alida and Marilou, who came to have opposed the Nazi occupation of their country. A network of friendship and loyalty was created between them and as they threaded needles, amidst the noise of the sewing machines, together with the clothes they made projects of resistance and escape. Sometimes the seamstresses assigned to the night shift in the mending room, succeeded in the extremely risky operation of tuning the radio to the BBC.

The laboratory "condensed the basic values of the Third Reich: privilege and complacency combined with looting, degradation and mass murder" underlines the author who interviewed the last survivor still alive, Ms. Bracha Kohut, when he was 98, in his home in the hills not far from San Francisco.

"The seamstresses of Auschwitz", which includes black and white photos and which was also born from the author's meeting with the families of seamstresses, "is not a fictionalized tale. The intimate scenes and conversations described are based entirely on testimonies, documents, material evidence and memories narrated to members of their families or personally to me, corroborated by extensive reading and consultation of the archives "the author emphasizes in the introduction.

Adlington also reconstructs the relationship between Nazism and fashion and shows us how "eliminating Jews from the fashion industry and the clothing sector as a whole" was not "a fortuitous side effect of anti-Semitism" but a real target.

Marta Fuchs, who ran the workshop and was known for her skill as a seamstress even beyond barbed wire, saved many women by also insisting on having other workers at the workshop.

With Marta, the Auschwitz atelier became a refuge "even for those who did not know how to hold needle and thread". Thanks to the relative privileged conditions enjoyed by the seamstresses they could also meet in the evening in study groups sharing their knowledge. Some took German lessons, others learned French. Anna Binder, one of Marta's closest friends - says Adlington - loved to discuss science and philosophy. She also enjoyed composing satirical poems and this "got her three weeks in prison when she was discovered."

Talking about what they have been through has been impossible for a long time. For Bracha Kout, who was in Auschwitz a thousand days and every day "could have died a thousand times", the Holocaust has been a taboo subject for years. And when Martha's grandchildren asked what the tattoo with the number of the field 2043 was, she replied: "It's God's number".

(Unioneonline / vl)