Summary of Lucy Adlington's The Dressmakers of Auschwitz

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Mar 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669357308

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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