Four Red Sweaters: Powerful true stories of women and the Holocaust

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TheNew York Timesbestselling author ofThe Dressmakers of Auschwitzweaves together the stories of fourJewishgirlsduring the Holocaust, strangers whose lives were unknowingly intertwined by everyday garments.

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

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

PRAISE FOR FOUR RED SWEATERS:

'Novelistic and wrenching, this serves as a poignant testament to the unconquerability of the human spirit.' Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

PRAISE FOR THE DRESSMAKERS OF AUSCHWITZ:

'Compelling ... Adlington tells the stories of the women with clarity and steely precision' Jewish Chronicle

'An utterly absorbing, important and unique historical read'Judy Batalion, New York Times bestselling author ofThe Light of Our Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos

'Powerful ... a fascinating account.'Woman

Reviews

'Historian Adlington follows upThe Dressmakers of Auschwitzwith a moving account of four Jewish girls persecuted during the Holocaust whose fates were intertwined with a simple article of a clothinga red sweaterthat 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 himit 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 Womens Orchestra, years later recounted a powerfully symbolic act of resistance: stealing back her red angora sweater from the camps massive piles of stolen clothing. Novelistic and wrenching, this serves as a poignant testament to the unconquerability of the human spirit.' * Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW *

Author Bio

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