Personal Belongings: Stories About Clothing in Concentration & Death Camps — Karolina Sulej

Personal Belongings. Stories about clothing in concentration & death camps by Karolina Sulej offers a haunting, deeply human exploration of what attire and personal items meant to those interned in some of the darkest chapters of human history. Published in Ukraine in 2025 by Vydavnytstvo Staroho Leva, this hardcover edition spans 424 pages (format ~145×200 mm), and is based on archival research, interviews with survivors, and historical sources. 

The book draws its power from its focus: not only on grand narratives of suffering, but on the personal, tactile connections people had with their clothing—how items could be symbols of identity, reminders of home, resistance, and self amidst dehumanization. Sulej shows how something so ordinary as fabric, shoes, or a piece of cloth could carry stories of loss, survival, shame, hope, and dignity.

For readers of Holocaust testimony, material culture, trauma studies, human rights history—this is an essential and moving work. It insists on seeing what others tried to erase, acknowledging that even in extreme oppression, human dignity persists in the smallest things.