Fred Kort is a Holocaust survivor who escaped from Treblinka. He was only one of nine people in the world to have survived.
He started his career at General Electric and then as an engineer at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. After decades of learning about the toy industry, he was finally able to accomplish his lifelong dream of building his own toy company in 1969.
He launched his toy company with only one product, a bouncing ball he called “Teeny Bouncers”. Today, Imperial’s product line features more than 800 year-round and seasonal items which are sold in over fifty foreign countries. (Imperial Toy Corporation)
“Kort is 74 years old and was at Treblinka where between 700,000 and 850,000 Jews were exterminated”, according to Fortune Magazine, in a article written by Carol J. Loomis on April 13, 1998. Ms. Loomis went on to say that ” only nine are believed to have survived and Mr. Kort was one of them”.
You can read the entire article on this link. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1998/
Mr. Kort arrived in America at the age of 24 with one nickel in his pocket and the rest, as they say, is history.
Nowadays there are other ball toys which are manufactured by Purr*Fection and called Bouncy Buddies. These plush stuffed animals are children’s stuffed animal toys that have a hard rubber ball sewn into their bellies. They can be played with by children but dogs also love them; so remember Fido when you are ordering a stuffed toy for your child.
Tags: plush stuffed animals