Dress in Auschwitz
Clothing and Survival in the Holocaust
Professor Sofia Pantouvaki author
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publishing:19th Feb '26
£85.00
This title is due to be published on 19th February, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Focussing on prisoner clothing in the Auschwitz concentration camp, Dress in Auschwitz examines clothing's profound importance to the inmates' physical, psychological, and spiritual survival, through primary sources and survivors’ experiences.
Exploring the experience of Auschwitz prisoners through the lens of dress and clothing, Dress in Auschwitz examines clothing's profound importance to the inmates' physical, psychological, and spiritual survival.
Drawing on a wide range of sources, including survivor memoirs, testimonies, personal interviews, surviving garments, and rare illustrations, Sofia Pantouvaki focuses on inmates’ sartorial activities and the intimate psychological relationships that developed between prisoners and their clothes. In so doing, she highlights how clothing was vital in facilitating inmates’ daily lives, improving their chances of survival in the camp, and supporting the desire for personal expression in a dehumanizing environment.
Holocaust survivors’ memoirs and interviews have increasingly evidenced that the infamous striped uniforms were not the standard clothing throughout the years of the Nazi concentration camp system. As the war continued and shortages intensified, prisoners were often given a wide range of garments, including uniforms of deceased Soviet prisoners-of-war and civilian garments from the piles of clothing of other incoming prisoners.
Dress in Auschwitz allows us a glimpse of the persons’ individual - and sometimes very private - experiences of concentration camp life and suggests that the notion of ‘elegance’ operated as a social construct and a motivating force even in such punishing conditions. The book proves that the multifaceted functions of dress can remain relevant - and vitally important - even in the most appalling and inhumane conditions and times.
Dress in Auschwitz is groundbreaking in scope and sensitivity. The voices of survivors resonate alongside Sofia Pantouvaki’s forensic attention to stitching and the wear of camp clothing, revealing how dress shaped survival. By decoding acts of modification, like sewing a secret pocket or tailoring a rough hem, she uncovers in fascinating ways how inmates managed to personalize their clothing in the face of depersonalization. This book reframes clothing as a critical tool for survival and a prism through which the nuances of camp life are newly understood. -- Roslyn Sugarman, Head Curator, Sydney Jewish Museum, Australia
Drawing from an abundance of rare primary sources, survivor narratives, and firsthand interviews, Pantouvaki carefully unravels the uniform and other forms of dress in the Auschwitz concentration camp complex throughout the war. In doing so, she reveals how camp clothing in its many varieties was inextricably tied to prisoners’ bodily protection and survival, ability to withstand excruciating forced labor, creative expression when all other means of individuality had been taken away, self-dignity, and memory. And, importantly, she highlights prisoners’ active participation – often secretly, sometimes more openly – in modifying the clothes they were given to aid in their physical and spiritual survival. Dress in Auschwitz is an important book not only for its numerous new contributions to Holocaust history, but also for reminding us that the universally-relatable lens of dress offers a rich, more nuanced pathway to better understanding our past and present. -- Irene Guenther, Research Professor of History, University of Houston, US
Dress is not only about protecting the body, but an essential part of our being, our identity, and our emotions. This absorbing and moving book, backed by impressive research, is the story of how closely clothing was linked to prisoners’ existence and survival in the horrifying and degrading conditions of life in Auschwitz. Highly recommended. -- Aileen Ribeiro, Professor Emeritus, University of London, UK
ISBN: 9781788313681
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
272 pages