The Dressmakers of Auschwitz by Lucy Adlington

This is yet another book about what happened throughout Eastern Europe when the Nazis descended on them, but told from a slightly different angle, which is how to use a valuable skill in limited supply to survive an otherwise unsurvivable situation. This is the strange story of a group of women who sewed to survive. Fashion-conscious Hedwig Hoss, wife of Auschwitz comandante Rudolph Hoss, put together a salon made up of Auschwitz prisoners to make her fashionable clothing. Up to 25 seamstresses eventually worked in the Upper Tailoring Studio to make clothes not only for Hedwig but also for the wives of Hermann Goering and other Nazi leaders. There were no labels on the clothes that the women sewed, but the clients were well aware that they were made by the very people their husbands were trying to eradicate. The author, a clothes historian, does not sugar coat the brutality and cruelty of all people who conspired to and benefited from the Nazi focus on genocide, but also highlights how talented these women were, and how they managed.