The Tailors of Tomaszow: A Memoir of Polish Jews

by Rena Margulies Chernoff, Allan Chernoff

Overview

Preserving the collective memory of a community that is no more
 
Seven decades after the Nazis annihilated the Jewish community of Tomaszow-Mazowiecki, Poland, comes a gripping eyewitness narrative told by one of the youngest survivors of the Holocaust, as well as through first-hand accounts of other Tomaszow survivors. This unique communal memoir presents a rare view of Eastern European Jewry, before, during, and after World War II. It is both the memoir of a child and of a lost Jewish community, an unvarnished story in which disputes, controversy, and scandal all play a role in capturing the true flavor of life in this time and place.
            Nearly 14,000 Jews, one-third of the town’s population, resided in Tomaszow-Mazowiecki before World War II, many making their living as tailors and seamstresses. Only 250 of them survived the Holocaust, in part because of their skill with a needle and thread.
            Engaging and highly accessible, The Tailors of Tomaszow is a powerful resource for educators and a compelling read for anyone wishing to gain a deeper, more personal understanding of Eastern European Jewry and the Holocaust.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780896728790
Publisher:	Texas Tech University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2014
Series:	Modern Jewish History
Edition description:	1
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Rena Margulies Chernoff is among the youngest survivors of the Holocaust. She survived the Nazi destruction of Jewish Tomaszow, imprisonment in the slave labor camp Blizyn, and the terrors behind the barbed wire of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Years after the war she emigrated to the United States, earned a master’s degree, and became a teacher.
 
Allan Chernoff is a veteran of national network television news reporting. He served as CNN’s Senior Correspondent for eleven years and has reported for CNBC and NBC News programs. He is the recipient of six best reporting awards from the Society of Professional Journalists New York Chapter and was a reporter on teams winning Peabody and DuPont Awards.

Table of Contents

Illustrations xi

Preface xiii

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction xvii

1 My Tomaszow 3

2 Wartime in Tomaszow 49

3 Deportation 82

4 Blizyn 95

5 Auschwitz-Birkenau 107

6 Searching for a New Life 138

7 Afterword 159

Appendix A Names of Tomaszowers 163

Appendix B Dates of Interviews with Survivors 167

Notes 169

Bibliography 173

Index 175

Editorial Reviews

This is truly an amazing and powerful read. The Tailors of Tomaszow is a critically important work of history especially as we lose the eyewitness accounts of Holocaust survivors. Rena Margulies Chernoff and Allan Chernoff have done all of us a real service.
—Wolf Blitzer, CNN Anchor

This heartbreaking documentary is not of just one Holocaust child survivor; it is a tapestry of the Jewish tailors and their families in Tomaszow. The minute details that record an Eastern European life pre-Holocaust are precious, as is the record of death and survival in the face of the barbaric plan to annihilate all Jews. An unforgettable narrative.
—Eva Fogelman, author of Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust
 
Unforgettable. The Tailors of Tomaszow is a genuine and truly insightful portrait of European Jewry’s lost culture from the perspective of a child, as well as her teenage and young adult neighbors. It is a fascinating story of survival whose deeply engaging eyewitness testimony adds new detail and insight to our knowledge of the Holocaust. The Tailors of Tomaszow is a great resource for students of all ages seeking to understand the consequences of hatred. As such, I urge you to read this important communal memoir.
—Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League and a Holocaust survivor from Poland

One of the truly original Holocaust memoirs, The Tailors of Tomaszow tracks a family, and a small Polish town, along the most horrific of railroad tracks. Given that this is a Holocaust tale, very few of these Polish Jews will survive.  But among those who do lies the secret of fortuity, endurance, and a special skill set where a needle and thread meant the difference between life and death, and the repair of fabrics worn during wartime by the most evil of men would one day allow these broken and resourceful tailors to repair the frayed fabric of their lives with dignity and great longing for what could never be sewed back together.
—Thane Rosenbaum, author of The Stranger Within Sarah Stein, The Golems of Gotham, and Second Hand Smoke

From the Publisher