Himmler's Jewish Tailor

Profiles a Polish tailor who survived four concentration camps, headed an operation of 450 tailors supervised by Himmler and Eichmann, and testified in war crimes trials about the atrocities and massacres against the Jews.

Jacob Frank was born on January 3, 1913, in Lublin, Poland. He ran away from home as a boy to become a tailor rather than fulfill his father's wish that he become a rabbi. After the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Frank was randomly chosen to head the clothing factory at the SS-run Lipowa labor camp, managing 450 tailors by the end of 1943. His position put him in contact with such notorious SS officers as Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann, and Odilo Globocnik. A witness to the total liquidation of the significant Lublin ghetto, Frank was the only survivor of his sixty-four-member family. After Lipowa, he was interned in a prison and three other concentration camps, including Natzweiler and Dachau. He emigrated to the United States in 1946, becoming a successful clothing designer and tailor in New York City.