On the left, the sisters Bracha and Katka Berkovic shortly before the outbreak of World War I;
on the right, seamstresses recreate the same photo in 2013.COURTESY OF LUCY ADLINGTON
A sewing workshop, haute couture, in the heart of Auschwitz.
A workshop made up of two dozen highly experienced hands, among the best in their towns and cities, who had worked for big houses like Chanel.
A workshop that produced patches and uniforms for SS women, but also dresses, coats, baby clothes, layettes and even trousseau for the wives of high-ranking Nazis.
A workshop in which deported and murdered Jews were sewn with threads, needles, fabrics and materials looted.
A workshop that employed its slaves - Czechoslovakians, many, but also Poles, Ukrainians, French or Germans - for 12, 14 hours a day, every day, but through which, ironically, they managed to save their lives.
A workshop that is not a scene from a novel,
The dressmakers of Auschwitz
(Planeta), recently published in Spain.
Adlington, a British novelist, made a name for herself in the publishing world thanks to the publication five years ago of
The Red Ribbon
, where in a completely fictionalized way she spoke of a sewing workshop in Auschwitz, a story she had heard about for almost a decade. behind.
When she published the book, she began to receive messages from Israel, the United States, Central Europe... “They wrote to me: 'My mother was a seamstress in Auschwitz, my aunt... We know the real ones.'
I became obsessed with it and saw that it was possible to investigate it, ”she recounts in a video call with EL PAÍS with the enthusiasm of a hound who finally brings to light years of research in her 500 pages.
More information
Holocaust Literature: A Home Called Auschwitz
"Everything in the book has sources, the dialogue, the scenes... I haven't invented anything," emphasizes Adlington, for whom it was essential to adhere to the true story to tell his story, even if it has novel overtones and is written in a way clear and “for people who don't normally read history”.
"It was important to honor the truth," reflects the author, who also acknowledges that emotion overwhelmed her at times when writing, sometimes "a cold fury" and also "a great sense of responsibility."
The Auschwitz workshop is a feminine and feminist story, of friendship and loyalty.
They are the crossed lives of the talented Marta Fuchs;
of the indomitable Hunya Storch;
of Irene Reichenberg, who was losing her sisters one by one;
the French Marilou Colombain and Alida Delasalle;
of the young sisters Katka and Bracha Berkovic.
They have all passed away, but Adlington was able to meet the latter before he died in 2021. He visited her in 2019 at her home in San Francisco, California to chat with her.
"It was surreal," he confesses.
"I was there, in the kitchen of this woman who had made me chicken for dinner (and an incredible apple pie) and who had spent 1,000 days in Auschwitz," Adlington reflects graphically on the impact of talking to one of those people. which I have been researching for years.
The author of the book, Lucy Adlington, with one of the surviving dressmakers of Auschwitz, Bracha Berkovic (Kohut after marriage), at the latter's home in 2019 in San Francisco, California (USA).COURTESY OF LUCY ADLINGTON
The book exudes feminism.
Adlington wants, on the one hand, to break taboos when it comes to counting the lives of that half of humanity.
“Everything in history revolves around man: books, statues, memories.
Here we have to look at different sources, archaeology, newspapers.
We must decode the lives of previously silenced women.
In the past there has been a lot of focus on men's work, but how did women impact it?
It is something very powerful, it does not exclude men, but with the perspective of women we discover many things.
Nobody knew about this fashion salon and it tells us a lot, ”she assures.
Are there many stories left to tell?
"Absolutely.
We are breaking taboos of certain experiences, of sexual violence, the role of pregnancy, of motherhood.
Every person has a story.”
The sewing room became a refuge for women, who came from doing even harder work, not forgetting that they were in a concentration camp under enemy scrutiny.
There they sewed garments so valued that the waiting list reached six months.
It was all a pure contradiction: the Nazis refused even to let the Jews touch them, considered them minor beings, accused them of laziness, but they took advantage of their best talents in exchange for a watery turnip soup and a chewy crust of bread with a piece of sausage
The seamstresses sewed for their executioners.
They spent days without seeing sunlight, housed in the same barracks where they worked, but at least they had a place to sleep with fewer lice and bedbugs—typhus plagues were fatal—than the others.
They were slaves
but they were the most privileged prisoners.
That minority had the chance to be human,” he says.
Adlington also talks about the Hosses, the country's ruling family.
Rudolf and Hedwig, with their garden full of roses, wall to wall with Auschwitz.
From Katka Berkovic he picks up the phrase: “We were not human, we were dogs, they were our owners”.
But they weren't dogs.
“They were a normal family, and they made some decisions.
And they were the wrong ones”, he reflects on those “little egoists” and the conditions in which they enslaved the Jews or common prisoners present there after taking everything they had.
According to the author, in pre-Nazi Germany 80% of the department stores belonged to Jewish businessmen, as was the case with half of the wholesale textile companies.
Everything was “
aryanized
”, that is, expropriated to pass into non-Jewish hands.
Cover of 'The Dressmakers of Auschwitz', by Lucy Adlington (Editorial Planeta).
Hence, she also mentions brands that have survived and that, at the time, were associated with Nazism: she speaks of Hugo Boss, C&A, the Triumph corsetry, which, she cites, "resorted to Jewish slave labor, including children ”.
"Today they are not guilty of their crimes," says Adlington.
But they are morally obliged to tell it: 'Our brand was responsible for that'.
Many have not done so, but they have to be transparent, accept responsibility.
We have advanced and it is relevant in the conversation.”
In fact, without comparing the atrocity of Auschwitz, Adlington focuses his eyes on textile today and tomorrow: “We know that there are people who work in forced, unhealthy, probably unsafe conditions, in long shifts.
It is important to be alert;
We are not perfect, but we do need to make conscious decisions.
Because that should never have happened.
And we can't undo it anymore."
Most of those seamstresses (barely two dozen, on the other hand) managed to get out of the torture of Auschwitz.
They remade their lives.
And they stayed in touch throughout their lives.
Many married other survivors.
Some created their own sewing businesses, such as Ilona Hochfelder, who after making skirts for an SS officer managed to open the most prestigious bridal workshop in Leeds, United Kingdom.
Most of them had a hard time telling their children about these almost impossible lives.
It was not until the arrival of his grandchildren, more inquisitive, less frightened, that the oral tradition began.
When Bracha finally spoke about those 1,000 days, which for her were much longer: “I was in Auschwitz for 1,000 years.
Every day I could have died 1,000 times.”
Exclusive content for subscribers
read without limits
subscribe
I'm already a subscriber