Overview

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The beautiful and moving histories of four young girls in the Holocaust, all linked by a red jumper. This is the story of four Jewish girls - Joch, Anita, Chana and Regina - who resisted, sacrificed, or survived the Holocaust through resilience, skills, and kindness, and with the help, in each case, of a fragile red sweater. Each girl's story highlights a fascinating and moving aspect of Holocaust history, from the journey of a young refugee on the Kindertransport, to revolt and resistance at a death camp. They show how Jewish lives unravelled under the Nazi regime, contrasted with quiet heroism from so-called ordinary people. Four Red Sweaters is a universal story of love, separation and connections. PRAISE FOR THE DRESSMAKERS OF AUSCHWITZ: 'Compelling ... Adlington tells the stories of the women with clarity and steely precision' - Jewish Chronicle 'An utterly absorbing, important and unique historical read' - Judy Batalion, New York Times bestselling author of The Light of Our Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos 'Powerful ... a fascinating account.' - Woman

Full Product Details

9781761154072

Table of Contents

Reviews

'Historian Adlington follows up The Dressmakers of Auschwitz with a moving account of four Jewish girls persecuted during the Holocaust whose fates were intertwined with a simple article of a clothing—a red sweater—that bore outsize significance in a bleak time. Jockewet Heidenstein, a Kindertransport survivor sent from Berlin, treasured for decades a red sweater that her mother, who later died at Auschwitz, had bought for her before she departed. Chana Zumerkorn was a young seamstress in the Lodz ghetto who, though she was spared longer than most because of her knitting skills, was transported to Chelmno extermination camp and murdered. Her brother, who survived the war, later remembered the moment when, on the icy train platform where he last saw Chana, she impulsively pulled off her red sweater and gifted it to him—it would become for him a “talisman of hope.” Regina Feldman, an escapee in the Sobibor uprising, was likewise kept alive for her knitting skills, and later recalled conspiring with fellow seamstresses while being forced to knit a red-striped sweater for an SS officer. Another survivor, Anita Lasker, who was a cellist in the Auschwitz Women’s Orchestra, years later recounted a powerfully symbolic act of resistance: stealing back her red angora sweater from the camp’s massive piles of stolen clothing. Novelistic and wrenching, this serves as a poignant testament to the unconquerability of the human spirit.' * Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW *

Author Information

Lucy Adlington is a writer and historian specialising in women's history. She graduated from Cambridge University, with an MA from York University, in the UK. She has an extensive collection of vintage and antique garments spanning 300 years, including many unique items from the 1940s. She runs the popular History Wardrobe series of presentations, bringing history to life through clothes. Her previous non-fiction history, The Dressmakers of Auschwitz, was on the New York Times bestseller list for six months and has been translated into 22 languages. Her fiction titles include the award-winning Young Adult novel The Red Ribbon.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available