DOWNLOAD VIDEO
A new look at the Holocaust is coming from an unexpected place: a fashion design project decades in the making.
Hedwig Strnad, a dress designer, and her husband Paul were living in Czechoslovakia in 1939 when the Nazis occupied the country. As the situation deteriorated for Jews in Czechoslovakia, the couple sent drawings of Hedwig’s designs to their cousin Alvin in Milwaukee, WI, hoping that he could help find her a job with clothing manufacturers that would grant them visas.
Their efforts came too late; Paul died in either a concentration camp or the Warsaw ghetto and Hedwig’s fate is unknown. But her dress designs were uncovered by Alvin’s children nearly six decades later. To Karen Strnad, Alvin’s granddaughter, the designs speak to her ancestors’ struggle.
“The dresses represent prejudice and persecution and what was lost in the Holocaust because of it,” she said.
The designs lingered in the Jewish Museum Milwaukee until museum director Kathie Bernstein met the costume director for the Milwaukee Repertory Theater and wondered if they could actually create the dresses.
The dress makers researched more about the designer’s background and personal qualities as the clothing took shape. Now complete, they are on display at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, in an exhibit called Stitching History From the Holocaust and will remain there until Feb. 2015.
“What we see here is, history is ongoing. This is never going to die. And we have to keep telling the story so that history does not repeat itself,” Strnad said.
Warm up questions
- Where is Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia)?
- What was happening to Jewish communities across Europe in the late 1930s? What other groups were facing persecution?
Critical thinking questions
- Granddaughter Karen Strnad said, “The dresses represent prejudice and persecution and what was lost in the Holocaust because of it. The dresses represent love." What does she mean here? How can the dresses represent two such opposite things?
- Why do you think the Jewish Museum of Milwaukee chose to create the dresses after such a long time? What does the creation of the dresses symbolize?
- What do you think about the dresses? How are they different from today’s fashion?
