Joseph Sher, Holocaust Survivor and Elvis Presley’s Tailor, Dies at 100
Joseph Sher on Treblinka background Image by Getty, YouTube (inset)
A Holocaust survivor who became a New Orleans tailor with such celebrity clients as Fats Domino and Elvis Presley, is dead at 100.
Joseph Sher died Thursday at Lambeth House, a New Orleans retirement community and assisted-living facility, The Times-Picayune reported. He was the oldest Holocaust survivor in New Orleans and the leader of the local survivor community, according to the Crescent City Jewish News.
During the Holocaust, Sher was sent to several Nazi-run slave labor camps, where he was forced to build roads. He was one of only three of 1,000 men on his detail to survive the experience. Sher, his two brothers and his wife survived the Holocaust, but he lost his parents and three sisters, who died at the Treblinka death camp.
In 1949, Sher, his wife and a child born in a displaced persons camp settled in New Orleans where he found work as a tailor, a trade he learned from his father in Poland.
Working at Harry Hyman Tailors, Sher specialized in performance clothes for entertainers and uniforms for tall hotel doormen. When the shop changed its name to Murphy the Tailor, Sher “managed dozens of employees, each working at a busy sewing machine,” the Crescent City Jewish News wrote. He retired in the 1990s.
“He could take a piece of fabric from anywhere on a garment and make the garment absolutely new-looking,” his son Leopold told The Times-Picayune.
Sher’s account of his experiences during the Holocaust
A funeral was held Friday morning at Congregation Anshe Sfard in New Orleans.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
