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

Germany’s 1918 defeat by the Allied nations (principally the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and the United States) left it reeling from a loss of identity as a world power. The nation was economically devastated due to hyperinflation and war reparation payments, and its citizens were humiliated under the forced change from a monarchy to a republic. The Weimer Republic governed from 1919 to 1933, but several uprisings broke out. It was this unstable political climate and opposition to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles that led to the formation of the National Socialist Workers Party, or the Nazis. Party leader Adolf Hitler was sworn in as chancellor on January 30, 1933. Hitler went on to build up the nation’s military and entered treaties with Japan and Italy in an effort to fulfill his goal of world domination. His invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, marked the start of World War II.

National pride and the belief that Jewish sabotage had contributed to the defeat in WWI were the center of Nazi ideology. Antisemitism and exclusion of Jews from mainstream European society dated to the establishment of Christianity, but the bias and persecution had primarily been religious in nature. The early 20th-century rumor that the Jewish people sought world domination through wealth led to a rise in antisemitism in prewar Europe, which now justified itself in racial terms, targeting Jews as a supposedly inferior ethnic group.

This idea led many to believe Jews could not be safely assimilated into society, contributing to the atmosphere that allowed the Nazis’ rise to power. The party would go on to institutionalize racism by segregating Jews in ghettos, boycotting their businesses, barring them from entering schools and other industries, and subjecting them to numerous humiliations. Adolf Hitler’s plan was complete extermination of all Jews (and other groups deemed threatening or inferior, including gay men, the Roma people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and people with disabilities) via concentration camps like Auschwitz. Six million Jews were murdered under the Nazi regime.