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

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2021

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-11

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary: “I Want to Live Here Till I Die”

Rudolf and Hedwig Höss led a luxurious life overseeing the concentration camp. Lavish vegetable gardens, maintained by inmates, surrounded the exterior, while the house’s rooms were elegantly furnished and decorated. The Höss children interacted with camp prisoners daily. Marta Fuchs initially served as a domestic servant, but her seamstress training proved fortunate when Hedwig requested a new winter coat; this secured Marta’s position as Hedwig’s personal seamstress and tailor.

Hedwig took full advantage of the slave labor the camp provided, unashamed to “[send] Marta ‘shopping’ in the great warehouses of Kanada” (185). While upper SS officers stole freely from these storehouses, lower-ranking members were prohibited from such looting. This was a blatant double standard, but so too was the fact that the former wealth of Jewish prisoners now enriched their Nazi captors. Publicly, figures such as Rudolf Höss “spoke out against black-market dealing yet did not question the provenance of his well-furnished house and well-stocked garden” (188). The Höss home at Auschwitz boasted fine food to serve to guests, orchestra concerts given by camp inmates, and modern-day fineries like central heating.

Outwardly Hedwig Höss was a model wife and mother, but she was not oblivious to the atrocities occurring underneath her nose. Other SS wives were likely kept in the dark concerning specific events, though they were staunch supporters of Nazi ideals. However, many of them recognized the quality of the garments Hedwig wore and desired access to Marta’s skills—an opportunity Hedwig could not let pass.

Chapter 8 Summary: “One of Ten Thousand Women”

The Upper Tailoring Studio—Obere Nähstube—began operation in early summer 1943 with Marta Fuchs as the kapo (overseer of prison work assignments). In this role, she proved Rudolf Höss’s assertion that Auschwitz prisoners protected only their individual interests false: She used her influence over Hedwig to secure seamstress jobs for Irene, Bracha, Katka, Renée, and others. Twenty prisoners made up the tailoring “staff.” Hunya Volkmann’s transitioned to the Upper Tailoring Salon from the camp hospital where she had fallen ill and was amazed by the stark difference of life in the salon. There, prisoners had access to running water and toilets, better sleeping facilities, and mail. They interacted daily with SS officers and eventually were permitted to wear fashionable dresses.

A large part of the salon’s success was due to the wealth of resources available from the Kanada warehouses. Marta made frequent trips to them to select the finest fabrics, notions, and fashion magazines. The seamstresses also enjoyed the luxury of confiscated sewing machines. Under Marta’s guidance, the seamstresses honed their skills, and the salon expanded its clientele beyond the SS officers and their wives to include wealthy German civilians. The work was intense and the days long, as each woman had to satisfy a daily quota.

Chapters 7-8 Analysis

The complexities of Hedwig Höss and the creation of the Obre Nähstube are the section’s focus. Adlington portrays Hedwig as an entitled woman who unapologetically enjoyed a luxurious life based on the slave labor that tended her gardens, cared for her children, and performed daily domestic duties. As the mother of four, she embodied the ideal role for a Nazi wife. Similarly, she served “as a mother figure for the female camp guards” (191). While she appeared fully supportive of the camp’s mission to exterminate its prisoners, she was reported to have shown kindness to the prisoners who ran her household, supplying them with food and other gifts. She is an important figure throughout the narrative, as it was her tailoring shop that literally saved the lives of the inmates who worked there. Her contradictions reflect the incoherencies of Nazism itself; on a day-to-day basis, Hedwig apparently found it difficult to maintain the fiction that the prisoners were subhuman, but she never challenged the Nazis’ antisemitic ideology and in fact profited from it.

The establishment of the salon highlights the theme of Solidarity and Alliances: Tools of Survival. While the camp overflowed with talented seamstresses and dressmakers, it was the fortune of these particular young women’s connection to Marta Fuchs that saved them. Work in the Upper Tailoring Salon was vastly preferable to other assignments for many reasons, but, perhaps most importantly, it restored a bit of their humanity to the women. Their position underscored the duplicity of Auschwitz’s “Work Sets You Free” motto: On one hand, the seamstress assignment quite literally prevented the women from being murdered in the gas chambers, yet they were constantly aware that they were slave laborers whose efforts fueled the very Nazi efforts that sought to destroy them. The theme of The Identity of Work: Slavery or Survival? thus becomes increasingly important in this section.