A look … at the collection

A
blue-checked woolen dress is the only civilian item of prisoner clothing in our
collection. The 21-year-old Slovak Margita Lustig wore it from the end of 1944
in the Dachau subcamp Augsburg-Kriegshaber until her liberation in Dachau. On
the front she had to sew her Dachau prisoner number and a yellow band marking
her as a Jewish prisoner. Because the dress was too small for her she widened
it around the waste. For Margita Lustig, swapping the usual gray, shapeless
prisoner clothing for this wool dress meant regaining a sense of femininity and
individuality. Thinking about its previous wearer, presumably a Jewish girl,
Margita often asks herself “if she is still alive or […] was murdered.”