Berta Berkovich Kohut

Berta Berkovich Kohút (; 8 November 1921 – 14 February 2021) was a Czechoslovak-born survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. By the time of her death in 2021, she was the last surviving seamstress who lived through internment at the camp by creating dresses for the wives of Nazi officers.

Life Berta Berkovich, known as Betka or Bracha, When she was twelve, Berta was confined in a sanatorium for tuberculosis treatment, and learned to speak Czech. Despite attending a commercial high school, Berta had limited opportunities due to the rising fascism and anti-Semitism in Slovakia. She was taught tailoring by her father. During the peak of the Holocaust, a group of twenty-five young women, primarily Jewish, were chosen to produce high-end garments for prominent Nazi women in a specialized salon at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Berkovich sisters were among the seamstresses chosen to work in the tailoring studio.

Upper Tailoring Studio Hedwig Höss, the wife of camp commandant Rudolf Höss, founded a dressmaking workshop where both everyday dresses and luxurious evening gowns were among the creations. The (Upper Tailoring Studio), was operated by female inmates who were selected for their sewing expertise. These women included former couture seamstresses, fashion designers, and salon owners. Fuchs utilized her abilities and expertise as a former salon owner to recruit additional staff, including her niece, Rozsika, who had minimal sewing skills but assisted with picking up pins. When she died, Kohút was the last known surviving seamstress of those who worked in the sewing studio at Auschwitz.

Legacy In 2017, an oral interview of Kohút was recorded in California and published in an article "My Experiences during a Three-Year Imprisonment in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp" in the journal Judaica et holocaustica in 2019.

British novelist and fashion historian, Lucy Adlington, wrote The Dressmakers of Auschwitz: The True Story of the Women Who Sewed to Survive (2021), after interviewing Kohút. The book provides an account of the manner in which the Nazis profited from confiscating the belongings of deportees, reconditioning them, and making them available for use by citizens of the Reich. In a review, Laura L. Camerlengo, a costume curator at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, noted that the well-documented and researched publication also explores the experiences and personal stories of the seamstresses, like Kohút, who worked in the fashion studio.