This collection documents the life and significant experiences of Frank M. Sherman. Prominent themes in this collection are his work for the United States military during World War II, his and his family's experiences in Nazi Germany, and his membership in the Deutscher Vortrupp. The collection consists of a large amount of correspondence as well as clippings, audiocassettes, publication, scrapbooks, official papers, notes, and a few photographs of friends or family members

Frank (Fritz) Shurman was born in Hildesheim in 1915 to Willy Schuermann and his wife Alma Mueller. His father owned a men's clothing store in Hildesheim. In 1938, the Gestapo confiscated the account books of the firm and the firm had to be liquidated. Frank and his father were arrested during Kristallnacht and taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp. After his release he managed to flee to a refugee camp in England. With the help of Augusta Hamilton, a Christian American Frank Shurman had met in Berlin in 1938, he and his famil were able to immigrate to the US in 1940. In 1943 he met his future wife Margery Moses; they got married in 1945. He served in the US army and interviewed German prisoners of war. Later, he became a successful businessman in the textile and clothing industry

Margery and Frank Shurman returned to Hildesheim several times. In 1976, Frank Shurman received the Bundesverdienstkreuz

Frank Shurman was friends with Gerhard Loeffler, a Protestant from Dresden. Gerhard Loeffler visited his friend several time while Frank Shurman was imprisoned in Buchenwald after Kristallnacht. They continued to keep in touch and corresponded for 68 years (1934-1992)

Frank Shurman's memoir, All Our Hopes are You: a True Story about a Great Woman and her Compassion for Strangers in Need [ME 598] is available in the Memoir Collection of the LBI

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