Summary of Lucy Adlington's The Dressmakers of Auschwitz

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 A group of women in white headscarves sat sewing at long wooden tables, heads bent over garments, needles in, needles out. They were sewing clothes for the wives of high-ranking men from the Auschwitz SS garrison. Men notorious for beatings, torture, and mass murder.
#2 The forces that converged to create a fashion salon in Auschwitz were also responsible for shaping and fracturing the lives of the women who would eventually work there. The world is very small when we are children, yet rich with details and sensation.
#3 Irene Reichenberg was born in 1922 in Bratislava, a beautiful Czechoslovakian city on the banks of the river Danube. Her birth came three years after a census that showed the city’s population was mainly an ethnic mix of Germans, Slovaks, and Hungarians.
#4 Irene’s family was very large, and she had eight siblings. Her father was a shoemaker, and her mother a housewife. They were poor, and they struggled to support their large family.

Sujets

• Jews

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 22 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669357308
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Lucy Adlington's The Dressmakers Of Auschwitz
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

A group of women in white headscarves sat sewing at long wooden tables, heads bent over garments, needles in, needles out. They were sewing clothes for the wives of high-ranking men from the Auschwitz SS garrison. Men notorious for beatings, torture, and mass murder.

#2

The forces that converged to create a fashion salon in Auschwitz were also responsible for shaping and fracturing the lives of the women who would eventually work there. The world is very small when we are children, yet rich with details and sensation.

#3

Irene Reichenberg was born in 1922 in Bratislava, a beautiful Czechoslovakian city on the banks of the river Danube. Her birth came three years after a census that showed the city’s population was mainly an ethnic mix of Germans, Slovaks, and Hungarians.

#4

Irene’s family was very large, and she had eight siblings. Her father was a shoemaker, and her mother a housewife. They were poor, and they struggled to support their large family.

#5

Bracha’s childhood was spent in the rural town of Čepa, in the highlands of Carpathian Ruthenia. The landscape was dominated by the seemingly endless ranges of the Tatras Mountains, which softened down into fields of clover, rye, barley, and sprouting green tops of sugar beet.

#6

Bracha’s childhood was filled with the smell of Sabbath challah bread, the taste of matzo crackers sprinkled with crystallized sugar, and the taste of baked apples with her Aunt Serena. She loved to go to school.

#7

Education was a core Jewish value, even if it meant saving money at home. Many girls were in simple shift dresses, easy to sew and maintain, while others had fancier dresses with a variety of lace or starched collars.

#8

The 1920s were a time of great change for Bracha and her friends. They went to Jewish Orthodox elementary school, where they were taught in German, a language that would become increasingly dominant in Czechoslovakian life. They played tig, hide-and-seek, and hoop bowling.

#9

The Jewish family life was celebrated on Friday nights with the burning of candles, the baking of challah bread, and the making of cinnamon biscuits and topfenknödel, a kind of boiled curd ball.

#10

The wedding of Bracha’s uncle was a world apart from the wedding in Germany celebrated on 17 August 1929, on a farm in Pomerania. The bride, Hedwig, was married to Rudolf Höss, a ex-mercenary paramilitary soldier. They had been introduced through Hedwig’s brother, Gerhard Fritz Hensel.

#11

Marta Fuchs was four years older than Irene and Bracha, but she seemed a world apart in terms of maturity and experience. She had attended a secondary school in Bratislava, specializing in the arts, and she had trained as a dressmaker.

#12

In 1934, Marta was in Bratislava, completing her two-year training as a seamstress. Rudolf Höss joined the SS, and his wife Hedwig moved with him to SS family quarters outside the camp.

#13

The girls were now old enough to be aware of the growing tensions abroad and at home. Nazi anti-Jewish rhetoric in Germany inflamed existing antisemitic tensions in Czechoslovakia. Radio reports were becoming increasingly bleak.

#14

Bracha became friends with a girl named Shoshana Storch, who was from Kežmarok in eastern Slovakia. Shoshana’s family escaped to Palestine while it was still possible, as did her parents and most of her siblings.

#15

Hunya, who was a seamstress, was planning to travel to Leipzig to continue her training. In 1938, it became clear that lines on a map would not stop Nazi expansionist ambitions. Hitler demanded control of the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia, claiming it was to protect the people of German descent living there.

#16

In 1939, parts of the country were ceded to Hungary and Poland. Slovakia was now a puppet clero-fascist state, with right-wing antisemitic rulers. Czechoslovakia ceased to exist as a country.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The Nazis were well aware of the power of clothing to shape social identity and emphasize power. They were also interested in the wealth of the European textile industry, which was dominated by Jewish capital and Jewish talent.

#2

The clothing industry has its roots at a local level. For young girls in twentieth-century Europe, picking up a needle and thread was a hobby, but it was more likely to be a necessity.

#3

The shopping streets of Bratislava had many stores similar to Good Shepherd’s House, as well as bazaars with trays of wooden goods for customers to rummage through. Smaller shops sold ready-made goods.

#4

Prague was the perfect place for an up-and-coming dressmaker. The city was famous for its high-quality fashion, and its old town was picturesque with buildings crumpled together and chimneys built high to smoke above the tiles.

#5

Window shopping in Prague is a great example of how shoppers in the mid-twentieth century enjoyed their leisure activities.