Dress in Auschwitz

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 dehumanising 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.