Mark Jacobs
Mark Jacobs was born in 1956 in South Dallas, then the center of the city's Jewish community, and jokingly recalls being perhaps the last Jew born there. His family soon moved to Marsh Lane, when the area was still nearly rural, into a small house he shared with his siblings and his grandfather. His father, Mike Jacobs, was a Holocaust survivor born in Poland who endured ghettos and camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, and was liberated from a satellite camp in Austria. After the war he spent years in southern Germany, organizing Jewish sports clubs and competing in track and gymnastics, before immigrating to Dallas in 1951 with help from HIAS. Mike built a career in the scrap iron and metal business, starting his own company in 1953. Mark's mother grew up in Dallas, the daughter of immigrants who came through Galveston.
Mark grew up keenly aware that his father was different, an accented survivor who bore a number on his arm and spoke often about his lost family and childhood. He attended Arthur Kramer Elementary and then St. Mark's School beginning in seventh grade, where he served as a trainer for the football and basketball teams and formed lasting friendships. Deciding at age eight that he wanted to become an attorney, he went on to study history at Brandeis University near Boston, spent a year abroad, and earned his law degree at St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio. He is the oldest of four siblings, all of whom live in Dallas and remain very close, a closeness he credits to both his parents.
After beginning in general practice, Mark found his way into immigration law through a conference in San Antonio and eventually bought another lawyer's practice. He has helped clients become permanent residents and citizens and worked to prevent deportations, valuing the field because it lets him see clients leave with big smiles. A dedicated community leader, he served as president of the American Jewish Congress and of the Dallas Jewish Historical Society, an organization his mother helped found, and has served on the boards of Israel Bonds, Jewish Family Service, the Dallas Hebrew Free Loan Association, and the Dallas Holocaust Museum, which his father founded. He urges the next generation to know their roots, be good people, and contribute to the betterment of the world.
Full Transcript
all right Mark 1956 Dallas Texas not going back too far let's go back when you were a little boy what do you remember when you just a little kid um I remember well first of all I was probably the last Jew born in South Dallas so which is where the Jewish Community was back in those days and um so I lived there for about six months and then we moved to Marsh Lane and what I remember about marshan was a fairly small house although of course it didn't seem that small at the time um I was the upper bunk my brother and sister my lower
bunk um my youngest brother was in a crib Walnut Hill at that time was like two no Marsh Lane was like two lanes wide you know almost rural in in a sense and you know it snowed and my grandfather lived with us so he had one of the bedrooms my parents had a bedroom you know coming to The JCC um did Nursery School at Shar is RO and kindergarten share his Ro so kind of a pretty quiet life pretty good of course when you're four or 5 years old you really don't think about that stuff what what did your dad do for a living he
was um in the scrap IR midal business and he started his company in 1953 yeah did World War II affect your family at all was your dad in the service no he was um he's a holocaust Survivor so he was born in um Conan Poland in 1925 we always thought and so he went through um a couple of ghettos in the camps including ashit birkenau he was eventually liberated from uh mous a satellite Camp called guzen 2 which is in Austria and then after the war he spent six years in southern Germany um I kind of figure having a pretty good time yeah cuz he
was he ran he um got a certificate in physical education so he went around and organized Jewish sports clubs and competed in track and field and did uh gymnastics and skied and just seemed to be okay H how long did it take him to recover from being in the camps to to starting that life well he was um he of course he came out of the camps weighing almost nothing around 70 lbs or so and there's a picture of him that I saw when he was helping the US Army and he had a little he had an army uniform and he kind of plumped out
so I don't think it took that long but after that he slimmed back down again and he was very um Slender and and uh and healthy yeah so how how old was he when he was taken away probably like 14 did they ever talk to you about that what that was like what what happened sure all the time we were hearing about it from very young ages um we kind of took it for granted because it was our father and he has the number um I think it's b49 90 maybe um so we heard about it and he um was very much so dedicated to
talking about the Holocaust to groups from a very early time he helped organize well yeah he helped organize the uh survivors in Dallas into an organ organization he was the founder of the Dallas Holocaust um Museum um and worked very hard to get that going so we were basically steeped in it right right so what what did he tell you though what what was it like you know when they when he knew that this was happening to him did he tell you his thoughts and feelings um yeah he's you know he was 14 or so at the time and and of course it was very
strange having the Germans March in he I think he had a pretty good childhood uh not very um his family was probably upper lower class you know working class um his mother ran a store and his father was a was horse and buggy and and went around um so I think he had a pretty good life he his town only had 10,000 people in it 3,000 of whom were Jewish so he had a synagogue he had an extended family he had grandparents his early life was good and then of course the Nazis March in and everything blows up in his in his face and he
you know he lost his whole family and of course for him that was very tragic and he would talk about how terrible that was for him and how much he missed his parents um but he was a very strong teenager he kind of knew how to survive and he always kept his spirits up and he always was hopeful that things would be better and he always knew that he would survive so we kind of grew up his family in the same camps as he was um he was in the same uh ghetto Ovitz until about 1943 so from 39 to 43 I think he was
basically with his family um one brother ran away and joined the party partisans and he was eventually killed by the poles but the most of the rest of his family was taken to trinka in he thinks 1943 so after that he was all on his own he just searched for them when the war ended is that it yeah I think he probably knew that uh they that where they were going um I think he had some idea that they had not survived right um after the war though he did find a few first cousins who he did not know had survived and you know he
was able to locate them or they located him I think point he was supposed to go to Palestine um and he could have maybe gone to Sweden because he had one of his relatives went wound up in Sweden um there was a problem with uh his paperwork I think at one point he was accused of being a communist and it delayed everything but eventually he had the option I think of coming here and um he decided you know why not land of opportunity and his papers came through and he came here in 1951 and he wound up in Dallas because uh one of the people
who was processing his paperwork told him that Dallas was a place of opportunity and and it would be a great place for somebody who didn't have anybody to go to as opposed to New York I didn't know anybody here but um hiest had arranged for him to live with a a lady named uh Mrs Haberman and she boarded some people and he had a job waiting for him um I forgot what I think it like a clerk in a store but that didn't last very long but other than that no he didn't know anybody and but very quickly he established himself um at The JCC
because he could teach gymnastics with a whistle um and after a little while he worked for um American Iron Metal and that's where he learned the metal business for the most part and uh went out on his own yeah yeah now where did he meet your mom he met my mother at The JCC and The Story Goes that she was teaching here and he was um involved in teaching gymnastics and somebody said to my mother you need to go see this guy um he runs a gymnastic gymnastics class with a whistle and the rest is history you know I think she kind of took a
little while to warm up to him but she was duly pressed and according to a letter that he wrote to his first cousin in in South Africa at the time he was like smitten and for him that was it your mom's parents were they in this country or they come from overseas uh my her father came here in the I guess the 1920s maybe late 19s with his brother to escape um what you know Russia so that the younger brother wouldn't go into the the Army which of course was terrible for for Jew and they came through Galveston um his brother wound up settling and
we had other relatives in Houston at the time but his brother wound up settling in in Victoria Texas and had furniture store and my grandfather came to Dallas and started a bag and burlap shop and eventually he was kind of fixed up with the woman who became his wife who also happened to be a first cousin and she immigrated here through Cuba in the early 20s and um they made their life here now you your brothers and your sister growing up your life was very different obviously than than your dad and whatnot did you guys ever really appreciate that when you were little I think
we were all really aware that he was different you know that he's he was a Survivor and of course that he came from Europe um he had a little bit of an accent um we learned later on that he has actually a very thick accent but when you grow up with somebody you think this is the way they talk right and it wasn't until I was an adult that I realized how thick his accent really is yeah um and he was always talking about what life was like when he was a little kid and he talk about his mother so we were pretty aware of
the fact that he had a different upbringing yeah now talk to me about high school where did you go to high school I went to St Mark's School okay and what was that high school life like for you um I started in elementary school at Arthur Kramer Elementary which is not that far from here and then I started at St Marks in seventh grade and it was a great experience uh first of all uh it's Episcopalian not Catholic um relig was part of the school but it wasn't something that was um overwhelming you know we had to go to Chapel and things like that but
I would say that the school was very respectful of its Jewish population which is fairly substantial um probably 10 15 20% MH so um the academics were great I had a good time with being a trainer manager of the football and basketball teams and um made some pretty good friends and we just had our actually 40th reunion class reunion and and fortunately my class has stayed pretty cohesive over the years so it it was a it was a good time and I think it was probably better it was a good fit for me now you wound up becoming an attorney right so was that the
mindset you had already when you were in high school um I think I decided I want to be an attorney when it's was like 8 years old okay so I I wanted to major in history become an attorney and go into politics and and why was that you think it's such a young age I um I always loved history and I still do and then I thought that being an attorney was how I could help people so that's I don't know why okay where'd you go to college uh Brash University in walam Massachusetts which is just outside of Boston okay and then where what about
Law School uh St Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio okay and then you went into immigration law was that always the path that you took or did you start somewhere else no I started out in general law and um the way I wound up an immigration law is um University of Texas with sponsor an immigration and the law uh conference in San Antonio and after I've been out for couple years I decided that I wanted to go to this conference because I thought it' be interesting and it would be a good way to visit San Antonio and I met some people there and
eventually uh one of them put me in contact with another immigration lawyer who I bought his practice and that's how I wound up in immigration law what what are some of the things that you do for people in that practice well one of the reasons I wanted to get into immigration law was because it helps people right so I help um individuals become permanent residents through either marriage to US citizens or because they uh us CI citizens are bringing in their parents um I had a deportation practice uh to keep people from being deported hopefully I help people become citizens um I did some employment
based but I don't do that really any longer but basically um I really like immigration law because I do help people you know at the end of the process which a lot of times only takes three or four months I have clients with big smiles on their faces right right now today we hear so much about immigration and politics does that affect your business at all um I'm always busy um I think that if there's immigration reform I will of course become a lot busier and I'm a huge proponent of immigration reform because I think that it's the right thing to do right um the
immigration law is out of date and needs to be redone uh because it's not responsive to the change in times that we need um but you know hopefully we'll have something one of these days now you know we've heard so often that Holocaust Survivors children become very successful do you feel that way or do you think there's a reason for that um I think we're kind of brought up with the idea that we need to um I don't know necessarily be successful but make something of ourselves and a lot of the um I think a lot of the second generation that I know of have
have created good professional lives for themselves um good business lives for themselves some of whom have become you know very very very successful but I think most of us have just um um created a nice comfortable life and hopefully had you know married and had children and pretty normal I do know that there are those who've had their problems being second generation just like everybody has problems right right right happiest time in your life I really enjoyed my teenage years and I really enjoyed my college Years so those were very fulfilling for me and then I spent a year abroad when I was in college
and that was a lot of fun yeah now you you mentioned that when you were in school you were you know involved with the sports teams and whatnot uh what was it like when the Cowboys came to town well they I was always a Cowboy fan so um I remember going to the cotton bow when nobody went to the Cotton Bowl to watch the Cowboys back in their losing Seasons um so I've always followed them I've never been a huge uh game attender and I watch them on TV sometimes but uh if they came to town in when I was in Boston I didn't really
pay that much attention to the fact that they were in town right I'm sort of a I'm a homer for all the sports but I'm not a rabbit fan now in your lifetime um did an invention come along that possibly that you use in business or just in general that when when it came out you said wow how do we ever get along without that well I think just about everything these days you know computers were very primitive when I was growing up you know taking um I remember in college taking classes in basic yeah and of course that's very basic these days and you
know smartphones and just everything that's everything that's made life so much easier um of course I grew up with typewriters and you ask kids nowadays about typewriters and I have no idea what we're talking about or you talk to people about push button telephones or or dial telephones and it's it's you know times change it's great a lot technology yeah yeah talk to me about your brother's and sister um I'm the oldest of four I was born in 1956 my sister uh Deborah was born in 1957 brother Andrew born in 1959 and brother Ruben born in 1961 so we all live here uh my sister
is the only one of us who's married and she has four adult daughters um Rifka Lisa Sarah and Aviva Rifka lives in Dallas and she just had her own uh baby a couple weeks ago um Lisa lives in the Washington DC area Sarah lives in um Fort Lauderdale and she's married to um a gentleman who's studying for the bar so we'll have another lawyer in the in the family and she's currently expecting in November um and a viiva the youngest also lives in Dallas so it's a nice it's nice because all four of us are very close and all four the girls are very close
I think that's one thing that we got from both our parents to kind of be very close and have each other's back and it's it's it's nice and what did you think of the Vietnam era with the demonstrations going on in the war wow um I remember very distinctly watching Walter kronite every night and having the the the fatality totals of you know US soldiers and Vietnamese and Viet Kong and being a little bit disturbed by the war um you know when I was just you I was pretty young so I wasn't all that well versed I think later on um I became a little
bit more uh skeptical of why we were there um I was the next to last class I did have a lottery number and they stopped the draft the year before my class would have been drafted and I had a low lottery number um which would have been a problem except for the fact that I was 4f so I was very pleased of that I was 4f um you that a tough time that's a tough time now in your lifetime you've lived through so many momentous occasions what on the national scene do you remember exactly where you were when it happened and it affected you I
I remember when uh Kennedy was assassinated I was in second grade at my second grade class at Kramer and I remember an announcement coming over the uh intercom from the principal whose name was Francis alen see I remember all that stuff it's a long time ago and my teacher uh Mrs alen B ran out of the ran out of the classroom uh crying and I remember that we were passing notes around you know we wish that he hadn't been killed and things like that I don't know that any of us really quite understood what that really meant um but I will say that when they
opened uh the six Flor Museum that I didn't go for many many years I just couldn't really bring myself to go yeah and I did finally go when one of my friends from college came down uh to visit Dallas so we finally went so it's that was pretty momentous um remember of course you know 9/11 and one of my uh close friends husbands was on um American Airlines 11 and I remember her calling me and telling me that he was on the plane and I was just absolutely shocked um and kind of odd things like when Jim cochi died in an auto accident you know
it's kind of an odd thing or when John lenon was killed the Reagan assassination attempt yeah um uh all those things are kind of of course sad kind of wish you kind of remembered the more happy moments does your dad does he have any kind of request to keep the remembrance of the Holocaust alive well you know he was the founder of the museum so of course um he poured his uh sweat and blood into that and that's doing well and hopefully we'll do better in the future the museum here in Dallas Museum in Dallas and of course we all hope that it we wish
it all its success and he still goes down to the museum and and chats people up and sells his books so he's still very invested in that and I know that he hopes that it will keep going because his whole mission as as a holocaust Survivor was to teach um what happened and he doesn't want people to forget what happened and to learn a lot of the lessons from that now do you have any involvement with the Jewish Community now I was uh uh president of American Jewish Congress back in the late '90s for 4 years uh that Organization no longer exists um but we
have a a successor local organization called Southwest Jewish Congress I was the president of the Dallas Jewish Historical Society in the early UTS for a couple of years um I've been on a number of boards uh Israel bonds Jewish Family Service I'm on the board of the Dallas Jewish Hebrew free loan Association I'm still on the board of the Dallas Jewish historical society and and stay active in that I've been on the board of the Dallas Hol cost museum for many many years and of course plan to stay active in that um so yeah you know I kind of grew up at sherith Israel and
so I think that my family's been pretty active in the community and I've kept that up now your mom started the Jewish Historical Society do you remember why she wanted to start that well she grew up in Dallas and she had a great love for the Jewish community and she always felt that it was important that um that era be remembered and studied and she's big on that on uh wanting people to know our Roots you know there's a very deep Jewish presence in Dallas and a lot of people don't know about it and she wanted people to learn about it so for her uh
and Ruth k at the time it was very important that there be some sort of organization that could uh uh preserve this history and also teach people about this history what advice would you want to leave to the Next Generation I think it's really important to know where you have come from because I think it gives you a lot of insight into where you are now and where you will hopefully go in the future um uh I think that I would you kind of like to I see my nieces and and hopefully their you know their future children I would just want them to um
be good people and in some form or fashion contribute to the betterment of the world um remember their families um and you know take good care of themselves you only get one shot at this and uh just sort of enjoy their lives you know it's it's a it's a great ride and you have to enjoy it great job man thanks for doing this you're welcome