A unique memoir with gripping stories and an amazingly smooth read, there is plenty to be learned from these pages. Merchant. Prisoner. Smuggler. Spy. Survivor. Immigrant. Speaker.
In his 90-some years, Jack Repp has been all of these and more. The lessons he hopes to impart in this collection of his stories are rooted in the teachings of his father, whose example always inspired him.
"We never cried," says Jack Repp, talking about his survival strategies in Nazi death camps. He and two fellow prisoners made a pact to help one another stay strong by focusing on good memories and the hope of the war's end.
And after he was liberated and recruited by U.S. intelligence agents to help track down his captors, after he built a business in post-war Munich, then arrived to Greenville, Texas, and began again, he chose once more to focus on the hope of a better life.
For decades, Jack kept quiet about his past as a Holocaust survivor. Now, for the first time, he's put his journey into a book. "I consider telling my story part of my purpose-to make sure that others remember," he says.
Dreams and Jealousy aims to convey more than merely the history of man's inhumanity to others. Jack shares the mindset that helped keep him alive, the struggles and strength needed to start over in a new land and to stand, in his own way, against the racism that underlaid the mid-century years in the USA.
Jack's tales are heartbreaking and horrifying, honest and gritty, sometimes humorous and even exalting-but they are also a reminder of resilience and the lifelong determination to define himself rather than letting others dictate who he must be.
