[3] His father was Herman Rotblatt, a Polish Jew, and his mother Fanny (née Steckel) was a Viennese whose parents were Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire.
Fred's bar mitzvah was to have occurred on November 9, 1938, but the Kristallnacht attacks on Jewish businesses began that day and it was never held.
[3] Fred's father was later smuggled out of Austria and spent World War II hiding in a church in Belgium, while his mother was murdered in the Chełmno extermination camp.
Leaving school after the seventh grade, he worked in a paper mill and then enlisted in the British Army when he turned 18,[2] serving in the Glasgow Highlanders.
[4] In 1956,[5] Barney Rosset, founder of Grove Press, hired Jordan as the publishing house's business manager.
[4] Jordan was responsible for recommending that Grove publish Rolf Hochhuth's 1963 play, The Deputy, which criticized Pope Pius XII's actions during the Holocaust in World War II.
Although it sold only a few hundred copies, Jordan convinced Rosset to publish Berne's follow-up, Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships.
To help sell the book, Jordan had Grove Press partner with Doubleday's bookstore in Manhattan to run a joint ad in The New York Times while the annual convention of the American Psychiatric Association was in town.
Jordan's text for Grove's part of the ad was an open letter to young psychiatrists, telling them to read the book.
[7] Some of the legal cases overseen by Jordan include those for the novels Lady Chatterley's Lover, Tropic of Cancer, and Naked Lunch, and for the film I Am Curious (Yellow).