Himmler's Jewish Tailor: The Story of Holocaust Survivor Jacob Frank

Mark Lewis, Jacob Frank

Syracuse University Press, Feb 1, 2000 - Biography & Autobiography - 340 pages

Jacob Frank survived four Nazi concentration camps, including Dachau and the little-known Lipowa Labor Camp in Poland. His extraordinary skills as a tailor led him to head Heinrich Himmler's two-hundred-fifty-tailor operation, and put him into contact with such notorious SS officers as Eichmann, Gaeth, and Globocnik. An eyewitness to major Nazi operations and atrocities, Frank's intimate knowledge of beatings, torture, and murder brought him to Hamburg in 1974 to testify in the war crimes trial of Wolfgang Mohwinkel and other SS officers. Frank's account of his imprisonment at Lipowa details how factories operated within the labor camp system, the construction of Majdanek, and how he learned of mass shootings in nearby villages. The only survivor of his sixty-four-member family, Frank provides the only firsthand account in English of Lublin and the destruction of its Jewish quarter. Amid the horrors and everyday minutia of life under the Nazis, he reflects on the role of faith, the will to live, and the temptation of suicide. Frank also examines survivor guilt, Jewish identity, the psychology of victims and perpetrators, and the role of memory.

Contents

• Dialogue on Brutality: 65
• The First Leather Coat: 73
• 9: 80
• Majdanek: 88
• Hangings Attitudes and Suicide: 95
• The Photographer: 109
• Eichmann: 119
• MajdanTatarsky: 130
• Officers: 135
• The Airport Rebellion: 146
• Schama Grajer: 151
• Schama Grajers Wedding: 154
• The Liquidation of MajdanTatarsky: 160
• Dora and Nunyek: 169
• Doras Return: 180
• The Lublin Prison: 183
• The Safe Haven of Despair: 204
• The Chicken Coop: 214
• This Is the Last Stop of Your Life: 222
• A Contact from Inside: 228
• The Dachau Shower: 240
• The Remains: 253
• The Reversal: 257
• The Mob: 265
• The Consequences of the Gela Later: 273
• Final Words and Thoughts: 282
• References: 291
• Index: 293

About the author

Mark Lewis, editor at Sidewalk, has published several short stories and a novella. Jacob Frank was born on January 3, 1913 in Lublin, Poland. After the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Frank was randomly chosen to head the clothing factory at the SS-run Lipowa Labor Camp. His position put him in contact with such notorious SS officers as Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann and Odilo Globocnik. After Lipowa, he was interned in a prison and three other concentration camps. He emigrated to the United States in 1946, becoming a successful clothing designer and tailor in New York City.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Himmler's Jewish Tailor: The Story of Holocaust Survivor Jacob Frank; Religion, Theology and the Holocaust
• Authors: Mark Lewis, Jacob Frank
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press, 2000
• ISBN: 0815606060, 9780815606062
• Length: 340 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs; Biography & Autobiography / Survival; History / Europe / Poland; History / Jewish; History / Modern / 20th Century / Holocaust