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IF YOU WILL IT IS NO DREAM - IV

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  The Trust Company became one of the largest banks in the State of New Jersey the old-fashioned way, through internal growth: one customer at a time, one branch at a time. Siggi poured himself into building a loyal following by showing up, shaking hands, handing out gifts, listening to customers’ problems, and offering remedies. The FED, however, were not impressed by these small gestures, and would not allow Siggi to keep his companies together. He would have to use his prodigious brain to figure out what to do. The idea he conceived would be the most outrageous than any he had come up with before. In 1975 Siggi became the first person to sue the Federal Reserve. The FED’s formidable president, Paul Volcker, was six foot seven, the son of German immigrants. Memories of the Great Depression loomed over the pairing of commercial companies and banking, and Wilshire’s ownership of   TCNJ embodied everything “Big Paul” vowed to crush. Siggi’s response to the threat was that he wa
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IF YOU WILL IT IS NO DREAM - III

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  North Jersey was seriously over-banked and competition was fierce. But Siggi made sure that TCNJ offered customers a more satisfying experience than any of its competitors. Customers were so appreciative of the personal and respectful attention they got, regardless of the size of their bank account, that they called the Trust Company, “Siggi’s bank”. He treated his employees with the same personal attention as his customers. As a result, employees remained loyal to him and to the bank. Three department heads worked for TCNJ for more than fifty years. Siggi opened his heart to all employees, customers, friends, acquaintances and, although over-overworked, he spent hours, sometimes weeks, helping others - at the expense of the business and his own family. Not for nothing was the bank”s motto “The bank with a heart”. He even took time out of his business schedule to give customers, large and small, free investment advice. Not surprising that, though the 1970’s was an era of high inf
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IF YOU WILL IT IS NO DREAM - II

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  Commercial banks are the oldest and most powerful financial institutions in the world. Siggi was warned that no industry in the country   has more consistently and cruelly rejected Jews from positions of power and influence, than commercial banking. There was nothing Siggi liked more than to defy preconceived beliefs. While surveying the newspapers for likely candidates, his interest focused on   a medium level bank: The Trust Company of New Jersey (TCNJ). Like Wilshire, it was run by an old-school board lacking vision. It would take years for Siggi to acquire enough TCNJ stock to combine the two   companies but it became his number one priority. Most of the TCNJ stock was held by approximately a dozen people. The majority of the directors on the board were old Nazi types, tall German WASPS, none of them under 70 years old, totally close- knit. Siggi picked up little bits of stock whenever they came on the market. When the largest shareholder died his son, Don Brenner, inheri
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IF YOU WILL IT IS NO DREAM - I

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                                                                                               After an intense study of the stock market, Siggi  Wilzig  began his extraordinary career by buying five shares at a time in the Wilshire Oil and Gas Co. This was a small   company whose stocks sold at an affordable price. Siggi had become a close friend of a fellow Jew, Sol Diamond, who was a very successful, well-known entrepreneur. Diamond had also invested in the Wilshire Co. and was concerned over Wilshire’s failure to realize its potential. The company was in trouble and needed fresh energy and a charismatic leader. Since Diamond was too old to take on fresh challenges (almost eighty) he promised Siggy that he would back him financially - if he would take up the challenge of overturning the present President of Wilshire. This meant purchasing large amounts of stock. Siggi never refused a challenge. With no money of his own to do so, he enrolled everyone he could think of,   to purch
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IF YOU WILL IT IS NO DREAM

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I am indebted to Joshua M. Greene on whose fascinating biography of a “superman” called “ Unstoppable ”, I based the following blogs:                                                                                                       The story of Siggy Wilzig is incredible. He arrived in America with no resources or credentials. He spoke with a thick German accent, had only an elementary school education, stood five feet five and a half inches short, and years of torture and starvation were still fresh in his mind. However, he made three promises to himself: never to go hungry again; marry a Jewish woman, have children, and help rebuild the Jewish people; preserve Holocaust memory and speak up whenever he witnessed injustice. Siggy was the only survivor in his family, of Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Mathausen. He came to America poor and uneducated, and rose from cleaning sweatshop toilets to becoming CEO of a New York Stock Exchange; a listed oil company; and a multi
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A WORLD IN DENIAL

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  It is inconceivable   that   the Arab media, which disseminates Israeli “atrocities” throughout the world, is blindly accepted by millions of people who have no knowledge of the true facts. Most news concerning Israel is biased, invariably falsified, distorted and not even properly verified by supposedly reputable sources, such as the B.B.C., CNN, REUTERS, the Guardian, etc. Currently, the world is concentrating on the war in Gaza, and the accusation by the Palestinians in Gaza of ethnic cleansing by Israel. Israel is a Jewish state. Its minorities are Muslim, Christian and Druze Arabs. Their numbers have grown steadily, along with the country’s overall population.  The Arabic    population in Israel in 1948 was 56,000. Today there are 2,178,000 Arabs living in Israel.   In areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority, everyone is Arab. Christian Arabs are a dwindling minority that fears for its security. The percentage of Christians has been declining rapidly, from 12
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SUPER-HEROES

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  The brothers Elchanan and Menachem Klemanson, and their nephew Itiels’ entry into the carnage at Kibbutz Be’eri began on   Saturday, October 7, when news began to spread that a major security incident was underway in southern Israel. As more details emerged, it became clear that large numbers of Hamas and other Gazan terrorists had entered Israel from Gaza and were attacking nearby communities. The three Reservists, at the initiative of Elchanan, (a captain in the Israeli army),   left their homes to help save the lives of Gaza border residents. Equipped with bulletproof vests and M16 rifles, they rescued dozens of kibbutz Be’eri residents from the hands of Hamas terrorists, before Elhanan was killed. “With extraordinary courage they saved   entire families”.                                                                                                The Klemansons are from Otniel, a religious, politically right-wing settlement in the Judean mountains, 50 kilometers east of k
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