Four red sweaters Powerful true stories of women and the Holocaust

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. (Mar.)

Four Jewish girls and their sorrowful connection. British novelist and clothes historian Adlington, author ofThe Dressmakers of Auschwitz, begins her engrossing account with a portrait of a happy Jewish family in 1938 Berlin. Few readers will doubt that unspeakable horrors await them, but there remains a readership for such stories, and Adlington tells hers with skill. None of Adlington's subjects knew the other, yet all acquired a red sweater that symbolizes their shared experience. Western democracies deplored Nazi abuse of Jews; all, however, enforced strict immigration laws, accepting only small numbers who had money or jobs awaiting them. An exception occurred when activists persuaded Britain to accept children. There followed the famous Kindertransport, when nearly 10,000 arrived in 1938-39. A bill for a similar plan was introduced in the U.S. Congress but was defeated. Adlington describes Kindertransport member Jochewet ("Jock") Heidenstein, age 12, who arrived in 1938; two sisters later joined her. Two brothers remained behind with her family; all were killed. Anita Lasker, a 12-year-old from a musical family, traveled from Breslau to Berlin in 1938 to take cello lessons. Later sent to Auschwitz, she became a member of its women's orchestra and survived. Chana Zumerkorn, daughter of a shoemaker in Lodz, Poland, was 19 when the Germans invaded. Ejected from their home, the family was crammed into the Lodz ghetto, where she labored as a knitter, until 1942, when all were shipped to the Chelmno camp and killed. Regina Feldman's family was sent to the Sobibor extermination camp in 1942; chosen to labor in a knitting workshop, Regina was the only family member not killed on arrival. Amazingly, in October 1943, Sobibor's prisoners rebelled; many, including Regina, broke out and survived. Tracking wartime horrors, and resilience, through cherished garments. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.