While researching Lilac Girls I was surprised to find that, though survival was foremost in every Ravensbruck prisoner’s mind, the desire to remain as fashionable as possible under the circumstances was often strong in the women as well.
Sketch by French prisoner-nurse Violette Lecoq
The prisoners who arrived at Ravensbruck often wore their best dresses and furs, since they’d been told by Nazi authorities to bring their finest things with them on the transports. Their clothes were immediately taken upon arrival and repurposed by camp staff.
After “processing” in the Utility Block, (above) where any jewelry and other possessions were stripped away and many women had their heads shaved, prisoners were issued an often louse-ridden, striped dress with thin jacket and a tin bowl. It’s no wonder the prisoners prized any bit of adornment that could make them feel like women again.
Some Ravensbruck prisoners drew fashion from memory and even wrote about it, at great personal risk. Nina Jirsikova, below, a Czech dancer and costume designer imprisoned at Ravensbruck and forced to labor in the furrier workshop, illustrated a fashion magazine at the camp.
Jirsikova passed around her comic drawings of prisoners (below) titled ‘The Ravensbruck Fashion Magazine’: ‘fashion hints for the demanding inmate’.
According to Ravensbruck survivor and author Margarete Buber-Neumann, the secret magazine encouraged inmates to “shorten–secretly, of course, for it is strictly forbidden–the sack-dress. Take in the waist; here a few safety pins, filched wherever possible, will come in handy. Puff up the bust–here you will need all the resources of the dressmaker’s art. Then you will be in fashion, your feminine morale will benefit.”
Women also risked savage beatings and possible death in the punishment bunker to make jewelry like the earrings below, on display at the Ravensbruck Museum in Furstenberg, and other fashionable items from “organized” materials. The bits of tape, wire and cloth were smuggled back into camp by prisoners forced to labor at the adjacent Siemens & Halske plant or from the tailor’s workshop where prisoners were forced to sew Nazi uniforms and sort clothing stolen from the countries Hitler plundered.
The plastic signet ring below is another great example of handcrafted camp jewelry.
Image from Voices of Ravensbruck, at Ravensbruck.kulturen.com
Often the prisoner’s only exposure to current fashion outside the camp gates was from scraps of newspaper used as toilet paper in the block or from the appearance of the female camp guards. In their memoirs, many of the Ravensbruck survivors discussed the fashionable hairstyles of blond camp guards Dorothea Binz and Irma Grese (below). Prisoners who were allowed to keep their hair often practiced these latest hairstyles, secretly in their bunks at night.
Dorothea Binz
Irma Grese
Well-groomed Irma (center) and friends in their camp guard uniforms
The prisoners were also forced by the camp staff to make fashionable gifts for the guards’ friends. The purse below, from the Ravensbruck Museum, was made by prisoners in the straw weaving workshop for the friend of a Ravensbruck guard. It must have been painful to spend time making such an elaborate bag, complete with the initials of the recipient, when the women themselves were dressed in rags and often went shoeless.
Many Ravensbruck prisoners were skilled seamstresses and risked their lives to keep tiny, homemade sewing kits hidden in their mattresses.
Especially toward the end of the war when the camp became less organized and rules relaxed somewhat, prisoners repurposed any clothing they could find, to stay warm or just to look their best. This handsewn drawstring bag complete with whipstitched pockets and shoes below show the prisoner’s resourcefulness and desire to be practical and fashionable.
According to one prisoner testimony from Ravensbruck.kulturen.com: “After a work day, all scissors and needles were collected. They were afraid of suicide. Scissors and needles were very important for us. They were treasures.” Maria
There were many French women from the fashion world and talented seamstresses at Ravensbruck and many of the survivor memoirs recall the French women in particular were very fashionable. They sewed little bags called “bautli” to carry their possessions and made hair bows from found materials.
Toward the end of the war, once the Nazis began to accept the possibility of defeat, they focused less and less on providing regulation uniforms in the massively overcrowded camp.
Prisoners raided the “booty piles” and added “organized” feminine touches to their uniforms and incoming prisoners were issued random dresses and coats, each marked with a giant “X” across the back to mark the women as prisoners in case of escape.
When the Russians liberated the camp they found prisoners in a range of conditions, from dead and nearly dead to newly arrived prisoners who were healthier. Below, prisoners happy to be going home.
Today, many Ravensbruck survivors talk about how they hated their blue and grey-striped uniforms so much it is hard to wear striped clothing to this day. I can only imagine how much the survivors today appreciate a fashionable beret or a well-deserved coat of red nail polish.
Polish survivors attending the 70th Anniversary of Ravensbruck’s Liberation wear the striped scarves, each printed with their camp number, that have come to be a symbol of their survival.
