Lucy Adling­ton’s Four Red Sweaters: Pow­er­ful True Sto­ries of Women and the Holo­caust traces the sto­ries of four young women dur­ing the Holo­caust: Ani­ta Lasker-Wall­fisch, Jochewet (Jock) Hei­den­stein, Chana Jochewet Zumerko­rn, and Regi­na Feld­man. Lasker-Wall­fisch, still alive today at nine­ty-nine years of age, was a Ger­man Jew who ulti­mate­ly sur­vived as a cel­list in the Wom­en’s Orches­tra of Auschwitz. Hei­den­stein was a child in Berlin when she escaped to Eng­land on the Kinder­trans­port. Zumerko­rn, a nine­teen-year-old from Łódź at the time of the Nazi inva­sion, labored in the Łódź Ghet­to and ulti­mate­ly per­ished in Chelm­no. Feld­man, from Poland, was one of the few sur­vivors of the death camp Sobi­bor. Their back­grounds are very dif­fer­ent from one anoth­er’s, as are the par­tic­u­lars of their lives dur­ing the Holo­caust, but each woman’s sto­ry, metic­u­lous­ly recon­struct­ed by Adling­ton, makes for com­pelling and often har­row­ing read­ing. What ties them togeth­er is that every one of the young women left some trace of her life leg­i­ble in the form of a red sweater. 

Adling­ton, a fash­ion his­to­ri­an, clear­ly has immense respect for the mate­r­i­al his­to­ry of every­day objects; the var­i­ous facets of fash­ion his­to­ry woven through­out the nar­ra­tive are a major strength of the book. In Four Red Sweaters, Ald­ing­ton thought­ful­ly explores the mean­ing one can glean from sweaters and oth­er arti­cles of cloth­ing. She also con­tex­tu­al­izes knit­ting, sewing, and tai­lor­ing as wom­en’s labor, specif­i­cal­ly in the ghet­tos and camps where the women were impris­oned. Final­ly, Four Red Sweaters touch­es on the role of Jews in gar­ment and fab­ric indus­tries pre – World War II, and on how Jews were erased from those indus­tries in Nazi Ger­many. Read­ers seek­ing his­to­ries of any of these top­ics as they per­tain to the Holo­caust more broad­ly would like­ly want to do some fur­ther read­ing, but there is cer­tain­ly enough to ground the read­er — and pique their interest.

The four-per­son struc­ture has its lim­its, espe­cial­ly giv­en that some of the sub­jects’ close fam­i­ly mem­bers per­ished with essen­tial­ly no sur­viv­ing record of their inner lives. (This is in con­trast to three of the four sub­jects, who sur­vived the war and par­tic­i­pat­ed in var­i­ous doc­u­men­ta­tion efforts.) The book occa­sion­al­ly diverges from a more ​“aca­d­e­m­ic” approach to his­to­ry in its reg­u­lar attempts to make sense of the prob­a­ble expe­ri­ences of those fam­i­ly members.

Over­all, Four Red Sweaters: Pow­er­ful True Sto­ries of Women and the Holo­caust is an engag­ing and worth­while read for those seek­ing exact­ing­ly researched and well-con­tex­tu­al­ized per­son­al accounts of the Holocaust.

Lucy Adling­ton’s Four Red Sweaters: Pow­er­ful True Sto­ries of Women and the Holo­caust traces the sto­ries of four young women dur­ing the Holo­caust: Ani­ta Lasker-Wall­fisch, Jochewet (Jock) Hei­den­stein, Chana Jochewet Zumerko­rn, and Regi­na Feld­man. Lasker-Wall­fisch, still alive today at nine­ty-nine years of age, was a Ger­man Jew who ulti­mate­ly sur­vived as a cel­list in the Wom­en’s Orches­tra of Auschwitz. Hei­den­stein was a child in Berlin when she escaped to Eng­land on the Kinder­trans­port. Zumerko­rn, a nine­teen-year-old from Łódź at the time of the Nazi inva­sion, labored in the Łódź Ghet­to and ulti­mate­ly per­ished in Chelm­no. Feld­man, from Poland, was one of the few sur­vivors of the death camp Sobi­bor. Their back­grounds are very dif­fer­ent from one anoth­er’s, as are the par­tic­u­lars of their lives dur­ing the Holo­caust, but each woman’s sto­ry, metic­u­lous­ly recon­struct­ed by Adling­ton, makes for com­pelling and often har­row­ing read­ing. What ties them togeth­er is that every one of the young women left some trace of her life leg­i­ble in the form of a red sweater. 

Adling­ton, a fash­ion his­to­ri­an, clear­ly has immense respect for the mate­r­i­al his­to­ry of every­day objects; the var­i­ous facets of fash­ion his­to­ry woven through­out the nar­ra­tive are a major strength of the book. In Four Red Sweaters, Ald­ing­ton thought­ful­ly explores the mean­ing one can glean from sweaters and oth­er arti­cles of cloth­ing. She also con­tex­tu­al­izes knit­ting, sewing, and tai­lor­ing as wom­en’s labor, specif­i­cal­ly in the ghet­tos and camps where the women were impris­oned. Final­ly, Four Red Sweaters touch­es on the role of Jews in gar­ment and fab­ric indus­tries pre – World War II, and on how Jews were erased from those indus­tries in Nazi Ger­many. Read­ers seek­ing his­to­ries of any of these top­ics as they per­tain to the Holo­caust more broad­ly would like­ly want to do some fur­ther read­ing, but there is cer­tain­ly enough to ground the read­er — and pique their interest.

The four-per­son struc­ture has its lim­its, espe­cial­ly giv­en that some of the sub­jects’ close fam­i­ly mem­bers per­ished with essen­tial­ly no sur­viv­ing record of their inner lives. (This is in con­trast to three of the four sub­jects, who sur­vived the war and par­tic­i­pat­ed in var­i­ous doc­u­men­ta­tion efforts.) The book occa­sion­al­ly diverges from a more ​“aca­d­e­m­ic” approach to his­to­ry in its reg­u­lar attempts to make sense of the prob­a­ble expe­ri­ences of those fam­i­ly members.

Over­all, Four Red Sweaters: Pow­er­ful True Sto­ries of Women and the Holo­caust is an engag­ing and worth­while read for those seek­ing exact­ing­ly researched and well-con­tex­tu­al­ized per­son­al accounts of the Holocaust.