Fromms. Wie der jüdische Kondomfabrikant Julis F. unter die deutschen Räuber fiel.

by michael-sontheimer-g-otz-aly

Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Economics, Holocaust, Jewish, Germany

Paperback

First published March 1, 2007

Reviews

[Meaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

People tend to forget, in all the talk about lives lost during the Holocaust, of the plundered property. Gotz Aly's study of the Fromm family, and how their wealth was stripped down to nothing by the Nazis, brings the stolen property to the forefront and it really got me thinking about Rudolf Vrba's theory that the real motive behind the Holocaust was steal Jews' wealth and belongings. Julius Fromm was a wealthy manufacturer of condoms and his brand -- under new ownership -- is well-known in Germany today. Gotz Aly studies his entire extended family, both those who got out in time and those who were lost -- and accounts for their stolen wealth down to the last reichmark. I found all the numbers a bit tedious, but he had to keep repeating them to keep them in the reader's mind, to show just how much the Nazis enriched themselves by their bloody actions.

This book is worth reading not only because it's a rare case study, but because it's good, solid history and well-written, just like Gotz Aly's previous book, Into the Tunnel: The Brief Life of Marion Samuel, 1931-1943 , the case study of a random Jewish child who died in the Holocaust.

[Törő László Dávid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Götz Alyval nincsen bírás. Ebben a társszerzővel közösen írt könyvében a Hitler népállamában kidolgozott elméletét (= a holokausztnak elsősorban gazdasági motivációi voltak) mikroszinten mutatja be. Ez a mikroszint pedig Julius Fromm zsidó óvszergyáros családjának és vállalkozásának tragikus története interjúk, levelek, fényképek, s persze az "árjásításra" vonatkozó levéltári dokumentumok alapján.

Megismerjük a keletről bevándorolt, nincstelen családból származó Julius Fromm sikersztoriját, aki autodidakta módon képezte ki magát a gumigyártáshoz szükséges kémiai ismeretekbŐl, majd az első világháború során dúsgazdaggá vált: a konzervatív politikusok idegállapotba jöttek ugyan az óvszertől és a tiltása mellett kardoskodtak, ám a fronton harcoló katonák komoly piacot jelentettek. Persze a weimari korszakban is inkább a higiéniai oldalát reklámozva lehetett forgalmazni a cuccot, mert a terhesség elkerülésének előnyeit "erkölcstelen" lett volna hangoztatni.

Mikrotörténet a mikrotörténeten belül, hogy a Fromm-család más tagjainak szemszögéből is el van mesélve a család felemelkedése és bukása: az ő verziójuk alapján pl. az apa egy autoriter, munkájának élő, rideg üzletember volt, aki végig bízott a németekben és a náci hatalomátvétel után is csak soká vette rá magát az emigrációra. A fényképek alapján szigorú polgárnak tűnik, Alberto Moravia biztos szaftos regényt írt volna róla.

Bár Fromm mindent megtett, hogy megfeleljen a nácik elvárásának (párthű embereket alkalmazott, horogkeresztes lobogókkal ékesítette üzemét, az óvszerreklám szövegében kifejezetten a "német" népi munkáskezeket dicsérte, vagyis izé, mármint nem úgy, hanem az elkészítését tekintve), hamar megindultak az antiszemita támadások ellene. Mérsékelten szórakoztató például elképzelni annak a (talán kamu) Stürmer-olvasónak a lelki világát, aki azért írt levelet a náci újságnak, hogy bepanaszoljon egy Rudolf Hess beszéd közepén elhelyezett Fromm-gumi reklámot, amelyet egy nem náci újságot olvasva volt kénytelen eltűrni :(

Miután Frommék emigráltak, megindult a szabadrablás. Innen a cím, amelyben nem náci rablókról vagy a Harmadik Birodalom rablóiról, hanem "német rablókról" van szó, utalva ezzel a fosztogatás ideológiától független, társadalmi kiterjedtségére. Aly részletesen leírja a legutolsó árjásított vagyontárgy útját is a banktisztviselők segítségével feltört magánszéftől a német hadikasszáig. Az aukciókról szóló fejtegetései figyelemreméltóak, itt azt próbálja számszerűsíteni, hogy közvetve vagy közvetlenül hány német profitálhatott úgy Frommék, mint általában az elüldözött vagy meggyilkolt zsidók vagyontárgyaiból csak Berlinben.

Amúgy elképesztő sztorik fűződnek a különböző vagyontárgyakhoz. Például az eltulajdonított Fromm-villát a náci állam bérbe adatta egy lovagkeresztes német katonának és családjának, mert hát nyilván megérdemelték szegények. Persze a háború végén menekülniük kellett, szóval nagy nehezen 1952 után Frommék közül páran jogilag visszavették a lakást. 1965-ben aztán egy napon csöngetett a lovagkeresztes katona korábban ott lakott felesége, hogy ő most akkor szeretné felásni a Frommék kertjét, mert anno nem kevés aranyat rejtett el benne. Felásta, de már nem talált semmit. Hát ez ilyen.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

A history of an interesting business at an interesting time that wasn't that interesting.

Julius Fromm revolutionized condom manufacture, at least for Germany, at exactly the right time. He started his factory in 1914, right when the German Army was running into WWI and a massive outbreak of VD, along with other consequences of war. Fromm's family moved from Eastern Europe to Berlin in the late 1800s, and his parents worked as cigarette rollers. He was able to take night classes that taught him about rubber manufacturing that led him to a method of making a seamless condom. He opened a small factory and his condoms, packaged with a note that a person could pass across the counter to the pharmacist without speaking, "Please give me a three-pack of Fromm's Act condoms," became all the thing. They were advertised as a men's hygiene device. Julius Fromm became a successful manufacturer, built a state-of-the art factory, and bought a nice house. Unfortunately, history also moved forward and Germans voted for Hitler. Fromm did not have to flee Germany until 1937 and some of his assets were not confiscated, so he had something to live on in London. The chapter on how the bulk of his assets were transferred to the German state by official bureaucracy was oddly interesting. The bank manager charged with opening his safe deposit box understood how unethical that was, so he brought a witness to sign that they had done it in the approved manner. Meanwhile, Goebbels appropriated the Fromms factory and traded it for a castle with his godmother, so this book has a mini-biography of Goebbels as padding. The real interesting part of the story: how a young man from a conservative Jewish family developed the chemical and mechanical expertise and the moral outlook to become Germany's most important condom manufacturer, is lost to history.

Fromm lived the rest of his life in London. His sons had interesting wars. One of them ended up in a British internment camp and was shipped to Australia, came back and served in the army. The other son was an actor in Paris who fled to Algeria, reunited with his wife who was hiding in Spain, and also ended up in the British army. There are a lot of Fromm relatives. Most of Julius Fromm's siblings were able to flee to England, but some were murdered in the camps. After the war, Fromm and his sons attempted to get restitution, but were blocked by the machinations of East Germany. They ended up collaborating with experienced rubber manufacturers and had to pay off Goebbel's godmother's lover to get the trademark, and Fromm's condoms have a 13% market share in Germany nowadays. It's a tragedy how much has been lost because this book could have been way more interesting.

[J.M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book. I had anticipated more emphasis on why Fromm went into the condom business, as well as more detail on how condoms are made, but instead the bulk of the book was an accounting of the thefts perpetrated against the Fromm family by the Nazis. While I had heard of Nazis appropriating Jewish property, this book goes into more depth about the extent of the crimes. Overall I liked it, but I would have liked to know more about Fromm's feelings during and after the war.

[Evan Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A finely detailed explanation on a very micro level how Nazis stole the property of Jews. The author's point about how average Germans widely benefited from this theft and the vast numbers of people who participated in it are shocking. A masterful piece of historical research.

[Kusaimamekirai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Never having been to Europe, I was unfamiliar with Fromm’s brand condoms, which as of the time of this book’s publication in 2005, had a market share of 13 percent and was the second leading condom in Germany.
Even without this knowledge, my eclectic reading tastes weren’t about to let me pass up a book about World War II, nazis, Jewish exiles, and condoms.
At the outset of the book we get a little childhood background on the company’s founder, Julius Fromm, and quickly reach 1918 and the end of WWII when a young Julius begins a small rubber manufacturing factory specializing in condoms.
As the author points out, the timing couldn’t have been better in that early Weimar Germany was the “sin” capital of the world filled with bars, dance halls, cabarets, brothels, and everywhere in between with a need for his products.
This is not to say that he didn’t encounter resistance from prudish local officials. However, through some ingenious schemes to discreetly sell his condoms, Fromm quickly became fabulously successful and wealthy. One such clever example was:

“(Weimar) prudery and ignorance were still very much in evidence, and for decades to come, Fromms Act packages contained folded inserts that pharmacy customers could push across the counter without needing to state what they wished to purchase. The inserts contained this text: ‘Please hand me a 3-pack of Fromms condoms discreetly.’ ”

His company continued expanding well into the 1930’s until it ran into the Nazi buzzsaw rapidly gaining power and unceasingly hostile to Jews like himself. Ironically, Fromm considered himself German despite being born in a crowded Jewish refugee in what was then Russia, and had applied for and received German citizenship. Eventually Fromm was forced to sell his business, at a cut rate price, to Nazis who had their eyes on the profits from his ultra-modern factories, eventually fleeing to England for the duration of the war.
This is Fromm’s story but it is also the story of the fate of his sons and daughters, as well as the Nazi officials and ordinary Germans who profited off the auctioned goods and businesses of murdered and exiled Jews.
The author provides detailed documentation as to how the Nazi’s accomplished the latter through meticulously legal means (legal in the sense that protocols were observed but laws were arbitrary) that show just how complete the looting of not only Fromm’s family was but also of millions of Jews whose possessions disappeared into he pockets of all strata and classes of German society. To cite two examples:

“From the occupied western territories alone: France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, more than 1,300 freight cars transported the household goods of the deported Jews to Berlin. The number of inland ships unloading this kind of freight cannot be determined with any accuracy.”

“The clothing of the people who were deported or murdered wound up in secondhand stores or was distributed to the needy by the National Socialist Public Welfare office. If these transactions are factored in, the number of Berliners who profited from the auctions of Jewish property clearly exceeded 200,000. Since most of the profiteers from the deportations at that time were not single households, but rather families of four and five, the number of Berliners whose comfort level increased at the expense of the persecuted and the murdered Jews quickly jumps to a million.”

As shocking as the material damage was, it pales in comparison to the human costs. The fate of Fromm’s children and relatives is by and large tragic. While one of his sons, an actor named Max, would survive the war (after spending years on the run in Paris and being captured and escaping twice, his ability to speak English and German would find him consigned to typecast roles after the war playing Nazi military officers), most others in his family would not be as fortunate. Their fate would be sadly similar to the that of millions of other Jews on the continent during these years.
That the Fromms were exceedingly wealthy and well connected people inside and outside of Germany meant little once the German war began. Rich and poor alike would be unable to escape its grasp.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

While it was a very interesting read of one family's business taken over by the Nazis, I don't think the authors demonstated that the condom provided "the crucial clue to the ultimately devatating triangular relationshop between Jews, Christians, and Nazis". I think that the authors could have strenghened this line of inquiry within the book more. If they could have, it certainly would have made for a more interesting read in that it could have shown important parallels to the current age in that there are current conservative, milatant forces in the world that continue to wage war on contraceptives as a means of controling the masses.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fast read (which explains why I finished it). Quick, interesting & sad. Details a family's experience during and after Nazi Germany. All wrapped around an interesting product ~condoms. And other rubber products.

[Newhamshter · Rating 5 out of 5]

A new perspective departing from the typical Holocaust memoir detailing experience in the concentration camps. This book gave me an idea of the economics of stripping Jews of their citizenship and, later, attempting to dehumanize them.

[Óli Sóleyjarson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Óvenjulegt sjónarhorn á gyðingaofsóknir nasista. Höfundarnir fylgja fjölskyldu smokkaframleiðandans Julius Fromm og rekur örlög þeirra. Um leið er áhugavert að lesa um siðferðisviðmiðin í kringum þessar fjöldaframleiddu getnaðarvarnir.

[David Folender · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book. It provided quite a different take on the Jewish experience in Nazi Germany, one of Jewish business owners and the "Aryanization" of Jewish companies. One that really hasn't been explored much commercially.

[Zack · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was interesting, overall. The 2nd 5th of the book dragged a bit. It was otherwise rather engrossing. I had never read anything that dealt with the economic aspects of life under the National Socialists before, and I found that especially intriguing.

[Yoursexylibrarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a well-written book that should be a must read for all American high school students. This book provides a different perspective on how the Nazis took advantage of the Jews financially during the Nazi occupation of Germany. It's a heart-breaking yet important piece of history to know.

[Wagrobanite · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was interesting but in many parts dry as a bone.