Fromm’s is the true story of Julius Fromm, a Jewish entrepreneur living in Germany whose dedication to quality and whose business acumen made his condoms, Fromm’s Act, the most popular brand in pre-war Germany. Fromm’s is briskly told by Gotz Aly and Michael Sontheimer, who give the reader a detailed look at what made “Fromm’s Act” a household name in Germany, how Fromm unflaggingly insisted on excellence and innovation, and how this made his company a huge success. Fromm’s knack for marketing is highlighted; he stressed the quality and trustworthiness of his product at a time when condoms were not known for reliability.

Fromm was a proud German, a good citizen who worked hard to be considered an upstanding and true German. When the 1930s advanced and he was stripped of German citizenship and more ominous threats loomed, Julius was forced to flee the country. He was coerced to give up his company — which by this time had become a multi-national success — and his home and personal possessions.

The latter parts of the book detail the legal mechanisms abused for the benefit of Germans and the Reich, that were used to steal what Julius Fromm had spent a lifetime building. The German meticulousness found justifications and laws to legitimize the outright theft of everything that belonged to Fromm.

As a Jew who could have faced a far worse fate, Fromm was lucky that his wealth and position allowed him to escape the country at all. Still, the crime of a life’s work destroyed is compounded by events that followed the war, which saw maneuvers to prevent restitution for the crimes against Fromm and his family, as those Germans who had benefited during the war weren’t keen on returning their booty. It isn’t every day, after all, that you can steal an entire factory.

The book contains numerous details, small ones that taken together bring out the full scope of the evil perpetrated by not only Nazis but ordinary citizens. In particular, the descriptions of the auctions of people’s possessions are haunting in their quiet way. There is sadness in the detailed lists of furniture, clothing, personal effects — each item belonging to a person or family, who had purchased it or had it passed down through the family — auctioned off to eager Germans looking for a bargain. It was entirely clear to bargain-seeking auction attendees what had happened to the people who had formerly owned these items being auctioned off.

Some, like Julius and a few family members, had fled and left behind all that they owned. Julius then lived in Britain, where, like many German Jews at the time, he was viewed as an enemy for his Germanness and had limits on his activities. Some family members were less lucky in the manifestation of these suspicions, one being shipped by Britain to a harsh prison camp in Australia to wait out the war.

Of course, many others suffered a worse fate and never escaped Germany at all, shipped off by the Nazis to gas chambers while the contents of their homes were shipped to warehouses and then sold, completing the liquidation of a people and their possessions. One imagines that even today many German family heirlooms, passed down from one German generation to another, were originally stolen from Jews who were sent to their deaths on cattle cars.

Fromm’s is a fascinating book, focused on one man and his condom empire, but telling a larger historical story. Fromm’s civic and national pride meant nothing to those who wanted and took what he had. This account of how a successful businessman who did much good for Germany — through providing jobs and tax revenue and a vastly improved product used by multitudes — was systematically looted, is a story well-told and documented, but sadly, just one of many stories, most untold, that occurred throughout the Reich.

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Here is my FTC-inspired disclaimer explaining that the review copy of this book was provided to me for free, as review copies usually are.

About Scott Stein

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