The Dressmakers of Auschwitz by Lucy Adlington

Author:Lucy Adlington
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Published: 2021-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

Home was a haven for SS men severely mentally destabilised by their relentless murderous actions. Frau Moll came to tell Hedwig that her husband Otto often cried out in his sleep – the conversation was overheard by a seamstress in the house. Did Frau Moll know that among many other atrocities, Otto had personally thrown living babies into boiling human fat? Marianne Boger, married to one of the most brutal torturers in the camp, said her husband often came home exhausted at meal times, and that she worried about his nerves.51

Lingerie and nightgowns played their part in soothing menfolk, for marital sex was recognised as a relaxing influence on SS men. SS doctor Hans Delmotte had serious qualms about mass executions, so his wife Klara – a striking woman who wore black and white to complement her Great Dane dog – was brought to Auschwitz as a calming sexual outlet.52

Emotionally reclusive, and often burdened with administrative pressures, Rudolf Höss allegedly found his sexual outlet with a non-Jewish prisoner who had been responsible for sorting valuables at Kanada – ‘Diamond’ Nora Hodys. She was introduced to Höss through Hedwig’s love of fine furnishings: Hodys was brought to the villa to mend a tapestry carpet, and then extended her needlework skills to produce two new tapestries, as well as silk pillows, a bedside rug and bed covers. She also supplied Höss with jewellery from the plunder warehouse.

In August 1942, Hodys was invited to celebrate her fortieth birthday in the Höss garden. She has been identified in a surviving family photo, with little Hans-Jürgen on her lap and Püppi nearby. Her hair is in lush sausage curls, held in place with a colourful scarf. Her front-buttoned dress is neat and modest. Although the commandant was highly critical of low-quality guards who had sexual liaisons with prisoners, this did not stop him advancing on Hodys.

It was the gardener, Stanisław Dubiel, who spotted them embracing. He also claimed to overhear Hedwig rowing with her husband about ‘that woman’. Hedwig had Hodys dismissed as soon as Rudolf was away from home. According to Hodys, the commandant visited her for non-negotiable sex while she was in prison in the camp; she claimed to have been forced to abort a baby soon afterwards. Mentioning her name was forbidden in the Höss family. In later years, Hedwig defaced a printed account of the Hodys affair with the words: ‘This made up romance which no one knows the truth about.’53

As for Hedwig’s own sex life in Auschwitz, despite rumours of a clinch in the gazebo with a canteen manager from a shoe factory in nearby Chełmek, she maintained the image of a perfect Nazi wife and mother. Rudolf claimed that sex between them was infrequent once she found out the true nature of Auschwitz – that it was an extermination camp. It begs the questions, how much did SS wives know about the escalating genocide, and, more significantly, how much did they care?

Höss had promised Himmler that the extermination programme would be kept a secret Reich matter.

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