Grandma's army

  FIGHTING FOR LIFE If there are doubts in anybody’s mind about the justice of the present war that Israel is fighting, one doesn’t have to go very far back: The 1970’s were a particularly violent decade for Israelis, who faced constant armed attacks  and tragedy. Although terrorism has been an ongoing factor since before Israel existed, the 70’s was a nightmare. Palestinian terrorists were sowing terror against Israelis, both on Israeli soil and around the world. The most glaring example was the terrorist attack on the Israeli team at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972, in which eleven members of the team were murdered. In the same year, Ben Gurion Airport became a slaughterhouse, when three Japanese men - who had been recruited by the  “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine”,   and trained in Beirut - stepped off an Air France flight from Rome. Within seconds of entering the airport’s waiting area, the three opened fire, murdering 26 people ...

  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 t...

  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...

  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, ...

                                                                                               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...

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 ...