An extraordinary example of the talent lost to the world in the Holocaust will be on display at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee beginning this month.
With the help of costume designers from The Milwaukee Repertory Theater, the museum will be showcasing eight dress ensembles designed by Hedwig Strnad, who was murdered by the German Nazis in 1939.
Titled “Stitching History from the Holocaust,” the exhibit will open on Sept. 14 and run through Feb. 28.
About 16 years ago, a Milwaukee attorney and relative of Strnad, Burton Strnad, came to what was the Milwaukee Jewish Archives with two envelopes, one which had had a Nazi stamp on it.
Inside the envelopes were letters from a cousin to his father, Alvin, a picture of a man who would be recognized as Paul Strnad, and dress designs from Paul’s wife, Hedwig.
Paul and Hedwig Strnad, or Hedy as she became known, were living in an area of Prague in the late 1930s that was under attack by Nazis. The letters were pleas for help dated Dec. 11, 1939.
“What (Paul) was doing was asking for help in obtaining affidavits to leave Prague,” said Kathie Bernstein, executive director of the JMM. “Alvin tried to do this and was not successful, and Paul and his wife Hedwig died in the Holocaust.
“It’s such a poignant story. He’s pleading for help in a very understated way, watching what he’s saying through the mail.”
When the museum opened for the first time, Hedy’s dress designs, on paper, were on display. A little over a year ago, a museum visitor suggested to Bernstein that the dresses should be made. Bernstein said she never thought about doing such a thing, but decided to start researching.
The Milwaukee Repertory Theater was working on a production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” at the time and had just hired a new costume director, Mary Folino.
Bernstein approached Folino and asked if her team would be interested in using the Strnad designs to sew actual dress ensembles for the museum. In October 2013, Folino agreed to take on the project.
“They started working on this and I knew we needed two copies of everything they made because we had to have one here and we wanted to be able to travel this exhibit,” Bernstein said. “So they made these ensembles, and in the meantime we hired a historian, Dr. Jane Avner. I knew that we needed research on this and we needed a catalog because this was going to be the real deal.”
Bernstein said her team tracked down one of Hedwig’s nieces who had letters from her aunt.
Hedwig “was a lovely person,” Bernstein recalled the niece saying. “She had red hair and she smoked cigarettes and she made doll clothes.” Her niece even called Hedwig “saucy.”
This information about Hedy gave new insight into the designs, but there was much more work to be done. Bernstein said that only frontal views of the dresses were available, so Folino’s team needed to do more research of the period and its trends.
“Looking at (Hedy’s) designs and other designers in the same time period, across the globe they were all very similar,” Folino said. “We found similar silhouettes and patterns.”
However, Folino said some of Hedy’s designs weren’t very clear in regard to fabric choice or seams.
“There’s actually a teal dress in the collection that, in the sketch, had a number of lines drawn in it and we had a lot of debate if that was a fabric… or the pleating,” Folino said. “So we went and did a lot of extra research and went with the pleating since… many dresses had lots of pleats. So we had to take a lot of liberties with things like that.”
Folino’s team went to great lengths to create the ensembles, even dyeing and hand screen-printing by hand certain parts of the garments to match Hedy’s designs exactly.
The ensembles include shoes, hats, belts purses and gloves. She said her staff members took the project to heart and made sure all dress ensembles were perfect.
“What they came up with far-far-far-far-far exceeded our expectations,” Bernstein said. “The work is phenomenal. They used vintage zippers; they dyed shoes, they hand-screened some of the fabric because they wanted to replicate what Hedy had in mind. It truly was an unbelievable process.”
For more information, contact the museum, 414-390-5730 or visit JewishMuseumMilwaukee.org.
Rebecca Levine is a freelance writer living in Menomonee Falls.
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