Four Red Sweaters: Powerful True Stories of Women and the Holocaust

by Lucy Adlington

Overview

The New York Times bestselling author of The Dressmakers of Auschwitz tells the stories of four Jewish girls during the Holocaust, strangers whose lives were unknowingly linked by everyday garments, revealing how the ordinary can connect us in extraordinary ways.

Jock Heidenstein, Anita Lasker, Chana Zumerkorn, and Regina Feldman all faced the Holocaust in different ways. While they did not know each other--in fact had never met--each had a red sweater that would play a major part in their lives. In this absorbing and deeply moving account, award-winning clothes historian Lucy Adlington documents their stories, knitting together the experiences that fragmented their families and their lives.

Adlington immortalizes these young women whose resilience, skills, strength, and kindness accompanied them through the darkest events in human history. A powerful reminder of the suffering they endured and a celebration of courage, love, and tenacity, this moving and original work illuminates moments long lost to history, now pieced back together by a simple garment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798874877026
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/18/2025
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Lucy Adlington is a British novelist and clothes historian with more than twenty years’ experience researching social history and writing fiction and nonfiction. She lives in Yorkshire, England. 

Esther Wane is a British actor and voice-over artist. After a career in finance Esther fulfilled a childhood dream of going to drama school in London, and her life as an actor began at age forty. She has a lifelong passion for literature and can often be found browsing bookshops at any spare moment. She owes her career in audiobooks to her impression of Joanna Lumley and has since narrated books in many genres, including memoir, politics, romantic fiction, and children's literature. She enjoys taking her listeners on a journey in time and space and bringing the characters on the page to life in their imagination. She lives with her family and collection of books in Hertfordshire, just outside London, where she has built a professional voice studio in the bottom of her garden.

Editorial Reviews

"Novelistic and wrenching, this serves as a poignant testament to the unconquerability of the human spirit." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[An] engrossing account . . . . tracking wartime horrors, and resilience, through cherished garments." — Kirkus Reviews

"Lucy Adlington tells of the horrors of the Nazi occupation and the concentration camps from a fascinating and original angle.  She introduces us to a little known aspect of the period, highlighting the role of clothes in the grimmest of societies imaginable and giving an insight into the women who stayed alive by stitching." — Alexandra Shulman, former Editor in Chief of British Vogue, on The Dressmakers of Auschwitz

“In The Dressmakers of Auschwitz, Lucy Adlington has unveiled not one but several long-hidden histories: the tale of a group of compassionate and audacious Jewish women who sewed for their lives; the story of clothes in the Holocaust; and the history of the fashion industry in World War II. Adlington has expertly interwoven these fascinating strands into an utterly absorbing, important and unique historical read.” — Judy Batalion New York Times bestselling author of The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos, on The Dressmakers of Auschwitz

"A fresh, moving Auschwitz survival story involving a remarkable group of women." — Kirkus Reviews on The Dressmakers of Auschwitz

From the Publisher

2025-01-29
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.

Kirkus Reviews