Unstoppable: Siggi B. Wilzig's Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend
Winner of Best of Los Angeles Award "Best Holocaust Book - 2021"
“A must-read that hopefully will be adapted for the screen. Greene lets Wilzig's effervescent spirit shine through, and his story will appear to a wide variety of readers.”*- Library Journal
Unstoppable is the ultimate immigrant story and an epic David-and-Goliath adventure. While American teens were socializing in ice cream parlors, Siggi was suffering beatings by Nazi hoodlums for being a Jew and was soon deported along with his family to the darkest place the world has ever known: Auschwitz. Siggi used his wits to stay alive, pretending to have trade skills the Nazis could exploit to run the camp. After two death marches and near starvation, he was liberated from camp Mauthausen and went to work for the US Army hunting Nazis, a service that earned him a visa to America. On arrival, he made three vows: to never go hungry again, to support the Jewish people, and to speak out against injustice. He earned his first dollar shoveling snow after a fierce blizzard. His next job was laboring in toxic sweatshops. From these humble beginnings, he became President, Chairman and CEO of a New York Stock Exchange-listed oil company and grew a full-service commercial bank to more than $4 billion in assets.
Siggi's ascent from the darkest of yesterdays to the brightest of tomorrows holds sway over the imagination in this riveting narrative of grit, cunning, luck, and the determination to live life to the fullest.
1138017779
Unstoppable: Siggi B. Wilzig's Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend
Winner of Best of Los Angeles Award "Best Holocaust Book - 2021"
“A must-read that hopefully will be adapted for the screen. Greene lets Wilzig's effervescent spirit shine through, and his story will appear to a wide variety of readers.”*- Library Journal
Unstoppable is the ultimate immigrant story and an epic David-and-Goliath adventure. While American teens were socializing in ice cream parlors, Siggi was suffering beatings by Nazi hoodlums for being a Jew and was soon deported along with his family to the darkest place the world has ever known: Auschwitz. Siggi used his wits to stay alive, pretending to have trade skills the Nazis could exploit to run the camp. After two death marches and near starvation, he was liberated from camp Mauthausen and went to work for the US Army hunting Nazis, a service that earned him a visa to America. On arrival, he made three vows: to never go hungry again, to support the Jewish people, and to speak out against injustice. He earned his first dollar shoveling snow after a fierce blizzard. His next job was laboring in toxic sweatshops. From these humble beginnings, he became President, Chairman and CEO of a New York Stock Exchange-listed oil company and grew a full-service commercial bank to more than $4 billion in assets.
Siggi's ascent from the darkest of yesterdays to the brightest of tomorrows holds sway over the imagination in this riveting narrative of grit, cunning, luck, and the determination to live life to the fullest.
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Unstoppable: Siggi B. Wilzig's Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend

Unstoppable: Siggi B. Wilzig's Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend

by Joshua M. Greene

Narrated by Michael Orenstein

Unabridged — 9 hours, 4 minutes

Unstoppable: Siggi B. Wilzig's Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend

Unstoppable: Siggi B. Wilzig's Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend

by Joshua M. Greene

Narrated by Michael Orenstein

Unabridged — 9 hours, 4 minutes

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Overview

Winner of Best of Los Angeles Award "Best Holocaust Book - 2021"
“A must-read that hopefully will be adapted for the screen. Greene lets Wilzig's effervescent spirit shine through, and his story will appear to a wide variety of readers.”*- Library Journal
Unstoppable is the ultimate immigrant story and an epic David-and-Goliath adventure. While American teens were socializing in ice cream parlors, Siggi was suffering beatings by Nazi hoodlums for being a Jew and was soon deported along with his family to the darkest place the world has ever known: Auschwitz. Siggi used his wits to stay alive, pretending to have trade skills the Nazis could exploit to run the camp. After two death marches and near starvation, he was liberated from camp Mauthausen and went to work for the US Army hunting Nazis, a service that earned him a visa to America. On arrival, he made three vows: to never go hungry again, to support the Jewish people, and to speak out against injustice. He earned his first dollar shoveling snow after a fierce blizzard. His next job was laboring in toxic sweatshops. From these humble beginnings, he became President, Chairman and CEO of a New York Stock Exchange-listed oil company and grew a full-service commercial bank to more than $4 billion in assets.
Siggi's ascent from the darkest of yesterdays to the brightest of tomorrows holds sway over the imagination in this riveting narrative of grit, cunning, luck, and the determination to live life to the fullest.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Best Holocaust Book - 2021" —Best of Los Angeles Award

"Wilzig's improbable survival and success constantly amaze...Joshua Greene paints a vivid, moving portrait of a Holocaust survivor who built business empires... and tirelessly fought anti-Semitism.” —Shelf Awareness

"A must-read that hopefully will be adapted for the screen. Greene lets Wilzig’s effervescent spirit shine through, and his story will appeal to a wide variety of readers." —Library Journal

"Siggi took hardships and made them a badge of honor. This is a story we need right now.” —Cyrus Webb, Conversations Live

"Siggi’s life story is a David and Goliath saga that reminds us what one individual can do—a unique, mesmerizing biography." —Michael Berenbaum former president, Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, former chair, US Holocaust Memorial Museum

"He taught all of us that you don’t have to be a victim of circumstances. May we one day inhabit a world where more people live by his example." —Congressman Donald M. Payne

"His journey... is nothing short of astonishing... I’m blown away by this man.” —Helen Raptis, AM Northwest KATU TV

“Joshua M. Greene delivers a captivating story as well as a historic document that will resonate with readers long after they finish his book.“ —Kathryn Zox, The Kathryn Zox Show

"The most important book of 2021." —Hamptons Magazine, April 2021 issue

A Best Business Book of 2021 — Strategy + Business

The Kathryn Zox Show - Kathryn Zox

Joshua M. Greene delivers a captivating story as well as a historic document that will resonate with readers long after they finish his book.“ —Kathryn Zox, The Kathryn Zox Show

Michael Berenbaum

"Siggi’s life story is a David and Goliath saga that reminds us what one individual can do—a unique, mesmerizing biography." —Michael Berenbaum former president, Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, former chair, US Holocaust Memorial Museum

Shelf Awareness

"Wilzig's improbable survival and success constantly amaze...Joshua Greene paints a vivid, moving portrait of a Holocaust survivor who built business empires... and tirelessly fought anti-Semitism.” —Shelf Awareness

Cyrus Webb

"Siggi took hardships and made them a badge of honor. This is a story we need right now.” —Cyrus Webb, Conversations Live

Helen Raptis

"His journey... is nothing short of astonishing... I’m blown away by this man.” —Helen Raptis, AM Northwest KATU TV

Kirkus Reviews

2021-06-02
A biography traces the odyssey of a Holocaust survivor who became a CEO.

Holocaust scholar and filmmaker Greene, whose acclaimed work includes the book Witness (2001), offers readers the extraordinary story of Siggi B. Wilzig. Born in Prussia’s contested Polish Corridor in 1926, Wilzig began his lifelong battle with antisemitism as a 6-year-old child when he was held headfirst over a meat grinder by a local farmer who threatened to make “chopped Jew meat.” By his 19th birthday, “nearly dead from exhaustion, malnutrition, and pneumonia,” Wilzig was among the few survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Mauthausen concentration camps. While the first third of the volume recounts the gruesome, brutal details of the horrors Wilzig confronted during the 1930s and ’40s, the rest tells the Horatio Alger story of his postwar immigration to the United States. With nothing more than a grammar school education, Wilzig found a job shoveling snow from a New York City sidewalk. The work shows how he eventually forged a multibillion-dollar oil and commercial banking empire. As president, chairman, and CEO of the Wilshire Oil Company of Texas and the Trust Company of New Jersey, he continued to face anti-Jewish sentiment “in two of postwar America’s most antisemitic industries.” Greene’s concise, approachable narrative successfully brings Wilzig’s “volcano” of a personality and “inspired voice” to the fore. The author recounts the entrepreneur’s interactions with presidents, celebrities, and CEOs and presents anecdotes of his business prowess and tenacity. Wilzig was, for instance, “the first person in history to sue the Federal Reserve.” In addition to chronicling his Wall Street acumen, the book relates Wilzig’s fight against Holocaust deniers, including his role in establishing the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, a further testimony to his legacy. This well-researched biography is largely based on original interviews with Wilzig’s business partners, rivals, and contemporaries (including his longtime chauffer), which—supplemented with ample family photographs—help provide an intimate portrait of a complex man. Like many rags-to-riches tales, the work leans heavily toward hagiography, though this may indeed be difficult to avoid given Wilzig’s remarkable life.

A gripping account that takes readers from Nazi concentration camps to Wall Street boardrooms.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940173224712
Publisher: Insight Editions
Publication date: 03/30/2021
Series: null
Edition description: Unabridged
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