Caution to the Winds

New York: D. McKay Company, 1962. Second Printing [stated]. Hardcover. Good/fair. [8], 312 pages. Index, The DJ is worn, torn, and soiled. Some DJ and page soiling and foxing. Inscribed by the author on the fep. Inscription reads For Annette Friedman with kind regards Sincerely Ira Hirschmann 6/1/64 Autobiography of an industrialist and diplomat whose experiences included being vice president of Saks Fifth Avenue, and being founder and president of the first group to offer FM music on the radio. He also secured the lives of Romanian Jews during World War II. Ira Hirschmann was a business executive, pioneer in radio broadcasts of classical music and political associate of Fiorello H. La Guardia. He went to work for L. Bamberger & Company in Newark, where he soon became advertising and sales manager. There followed executive positions at Lord & Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale's. Mr. Hirschmann's interest in government service led him to a long association with La Guardia. Mr. Hirschmann filled a number of roles for La Guardia, starting as a campaign adviser and trouble-shooter and finally to special inspector for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Mr. Hirschmann's anti-Nazi activities began when he organized the first American boycott of German-made goods. In 1944, after service with the War Labor Board, he was sent to the Near East as a special representative of the War Refugee Board to try to expedite the escape of Jews from the Nazi-occupied Balkan states. In Turkey he contacted a Rumanian diplomat, to whom he offered visas for the envoy's family to the United States in exchange for opening the concentration camp gates. Derived from a Kirkus review: Caution to the Winds is Ira Hirschmann's memoir, a Jewish-American success story, full of Harry Golden-like and Saturday Evening Post personalities and all-out humanitarianism: genial, heartfelt and hard-hitting, inspiring, intimate, intriguing. Three decades (the thirties through the fifties) of dedication in business, politics, diplomacy and random piano playing career by a Renaissance man. Ira rose from a Bamberger staff member to Lord and Taylor publicity man to vice-president of Saks, then of Bloomingdale's. He was Roosevelt's secret emissary to Turkey, negotiating the rescue of at-risk Jews; he had a run-in with General Clay over the surviving refugees of post-war Germany; for Ben Gurion, he conferred with Nasser; for our State Department, unofficially, with Tito; as Inspector General of UNRRA he rearranged Displaced Persons camps, tackled and tempered the Middle Eastern tempests. Along with Toscanini and La Guardia he won a One World Award, managed WABF-FM symphonic series, and founded the New Friends of Music. All these scenes, events, people and after-dinner anecdotes fill out a brightly-ribboned, bustling book-of a man, his time and his tributes to many.