Himmler's Jewish Tailor: The Story of Holocaust Survivor Jacob Frank (Religion, Theology and the Holocaust) [Hardcover]

Jacob Frank (Author), Mark Lewis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2000 | Series: Religion, Theology and the Holocaust

Jacob Frank survived four Nazi concentration camps, including Dachau and the little-known Lipowa Labor Camp in Lublin, Poland. The SS randomly chose him to head a 450-man tailor operation at Lipowa, which put him in contact with such notorious SS officers as Himmler, Eichmann, Goeth, and Globocnik. He made leather coats, uniforms, and personal apparel for these and other Nazis, and Frank's stories about these events are both fascinating and chilling.

Because he was an eyewitness to major Nazi operations and atrocities and had intimate knowledge of beatings, torture, and murder, Frank testified in the war crimes trials of Lipowa commandant Wolfgang Mohwinkel and other SS officers in Hamburg in 1973. Frank's account of his imprisonment in Lipowa details how factories operated within the labor camp system, the construction of the Majdanek death camp, and how he learned of mass shootings in nearby villages. The sole survivor of his sixty-four-member family, Frank provides the only firsthand account in English of Lublin and the destruction of its Jewish quarter, which was one of Poland's major ghettos. Amid the horrors and everyday minutiae of life under the Nazis, he reflects on the role of faith, the will to live, and the temptation of suicide. Frank and Lewis discuss survivor guilt, Jewish identity, the psychology of victims and perpetrators, and the role of memory.

By preserving Frank's Yiddish-English diction, the book makes the bold step of documenting the survivor's authentic voice, rather than creating a sterilized account in corrected English. The book is also highly unique in survivor literature because it include Frank and Lewis' discussions, showing the interactions between survivor and listener and how the layers of memory were peeled back.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Born in 1913 and raised in Lublin, Poland, Frank survived over five years of forced labor and genocidal imprisonment in Nazi camps between 1939 and 1945. For a while he was put in charge of a camp's clothing factory, where he supervised the making of special leather coats for the Nazi elite, including Himmler and Eichmann ("the whole look was meant to terrorize you"). Novelist Lewis (Suspicions Among the Thoughts I May Contain) has crafted Frank's first-person account of his life from "two months of interviews and meetings," and from the cassettes and videotapes Frank recorded in the 1980s for Yale's Holocaust archive. Lewis and Frank's oral history method, with its hesitations, digressions and questions, seems designed to preserve Frank's idiom and his detailed process of recollection: readers can imagine the man himself speaking as he describes his slow, complicated years of persecution and horror. Frank witnessed the destruction of Lublin's Jewish ghetto: he may be (coauthor Lewis declares) "the only person to have survived the entire existence of the labor camp" called Lipowa, built inside Lublin and linked to the Majdanek death camp. Frank was later held at a camp in France, and then at Dachau. Frank's memoir stands out among Holocaust testimonies for the rarity of his experiences: Holocaust historians will want and need to know what he remembers about Lublin, Lipowa and other sites of labor and terror. Lewis's admirable introduction explains his methods, gives background and context for Frank's story and makes clear that he hopes for readers from both the community of scholars and the wider, nonacademic world: this meticulous record surely merits them. 11 photos; two maps. Agent, Barbara Brown. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

This may well be one of the most penetrating and moving records of one Holocaust survivor's ordeal ever to be published. -- Booklist

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 299 pages
• Publisher: Syracuse Univ Pr (Sd) (January 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815606060
• ISBN-13: 978-0815606062
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,534,895 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Himmler's Jewish Tailor:The Story of Holocaust Survivor, May 5, 2000

By 

Patricia Bissonnette (Connecticut, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Himmler's Jewish Tailor: The Story of Holocaust Survivor Jacob Frank (Religion, Theology and the Holocaust) (Hardcover)

I loved the book...I hated the book. What can I say? It's a wonderful story about a terrible time. From the time I picked up the book I found it difficult to put down. Knowing that Mr. Frank is indeed a survivor, I needed to get to the part where he was safe. I especially liked the way author Mark Lewis presented the very essence of Mr. Frank by not altering his accent, his syntax. The question and answer format was interesting. Not too many questions, rather, enough to help clarify certain points.

As the story begins, Jacob Frank a youth full of hope and dreams embarks on his journey. Who could imagine that choices, decisions made at such a tender age would so dramatically impact his life? As the years pass, the hope, the ambition, the joy of this wonderful young man is slowly, systematically robbed from him. It is a story too horrible to imagine yet Jacob Frank recalls every detail. He describes these events with simple details-not so dramatic as to be unbelievable. The idea of the Holocaust is unbelievable, unfathomable. Thankfully, for survivors like Mr. Frank, the world will know the horrible truth.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very valuable and moving insight into the Holocaust, June 20, 2000

By 

Robert Oliver "Rob" (Salt Lake City, Utah) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Himmler's Jewish Tailor: The Story of Holocaust Survivor Jacob Frank (Religion, Theology and the Holocaust) (Hardcover)

Jacob Frank speaks with a voice that comes from an ever distant time and place. He grew up in Poland, in a Jewish Society that was almost totally destroyed during the Holocaust. Out of the sixty four members of his family in Poland, Jacob Frank is the only one that survived. The only physical remnant of his entire family that still exists is a single photograph of Jacob Frank and his wife Dora. Mr. Frank carefully sewed the photograph into his clothing, and kept it hidden during nearly six years of survival in concentration camps and prisons in Poland and Germany. He wanted always to remember his wife and family; and to keep their image in his mind and heart. The poignant photograph of Jacob and Dora Frank is included in the book. With great courage Jacob Frank tried to protect his family and to help other people in the concentration camps, but he was trapped in a nightmare world where life had little or no value. There was not much that he could do to protect himself, or anyone else. Jacob Frank was valuable to the Nazis, because of his great skill as a master tailor. They needed him to make uniforms and suits. Because of his forced duties as a tailor, Mr. Frank often came into close contact with some of the leading Nazis; including Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann. He felt intense fear when he was in their presence, and sometimes he could not bear to look directly at their faces. He could only see shadows of evil when he glanced at them. As one who was there and survived, he speaks with a deep and unique insight into the Holocaust. He helps us to understand what really happened; and the men capable of carrying out a plan of genocide on a huge scale. He helps us to understand the great tragedy of entire families being murdered and lost forever. The witness and memory of Jacob Frank provide a valuable service to the world. His important book sheds light on a time of great darkness, and helps to stand guard against any future Holocaust.

5.0 out of 5 stars Himmler's Jewish Tailor, the story of Holocaust Survivor Jacob Frank, July 6, 2009

By 

Sandra H. Phillips "Sandra H. Phillips" (Asheboro,N.C. 27203) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Himmler's Jewish Tailor: The Story of Holocaust Survivor Jacob Frank (Religion, Theology and the Holocaust) (Hardcover)

This Holocaust Memoir,ASIN:0815606060 Himmler's Jewish Tailor: The Story of Holocaust Survivor Jacob Frank (Religion, Theology and the Holocaust)is one of the finest I have ever read, and I have purchased at least 10 or 15. If you want a story that is so well written, you feel as though you are right there with this desparate to survive, Jewish Tailor, then this book is a must to read. I can hardly convey to you what a compelling, captivating, horrifying true to life story this is.How very wily, and brilliant Jacob Frank truly was, as he was sly as a fox, outsmarting the Nazi's at every turn.Yes, it is sad, how he was systematically starved, and especially when he was wrongfully accused of stealing a crust of someone's bread, he even looks this person up after liberation, to make sure his friend believed he was innocent of that.I will never, ever part with this book.Out of all the books I have amassed in my collection of Holocaust Survivor Memoirs, it is most definetly one of the most excellent stories.I can truly say, I hung on each and every word that this man wrote.It is so brilliantly written, capturing the devilish, historic, "essence", if I may say, of this cruel, merciless, period of History that Frank, and millions of other Jews were forced to endure.Unfortunately, only the ones blessed with ability to outsmart Hitler's henchmen, daily, at every turn it seems, were fortunate to have lived through it, escaping so that the whole world could be told about this nightmare of being starved, tortured and killed, just because of their race. You will never regret purchasing this fairly inexpensive, totally interesting book, and you certainly will never forget it.I have even googled this man online, hoping to find a link to convey my sorrow that he had to endure this horrific, unbelievably cruel experience in his life.You will love his victorious story, and for sure re read it again.