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Title: Considering firm with Nazi ties for naming rights is wrong move (Never Forget!!!)
Source:
New York Daily News
URL Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/f ... m_with_nazi_ties_for_nami.html
Published: Sep 11, 2008
Author: Gary Myers
Post Date: 2008-09-11 16:47:11 by X-15
Keywords: None
Views: 209
Comments: 19
I was sitting in the end zone in the upper deck with my father when Giants Stadium opened for Cowboys vs. Giants on Oct. 10, 1976. In the last 32 years, between Giants practices and Jets and Giants games, I've probably been there 750 times. Not once did I look up at the name of the stadium on the big blue signs and cringe as I drove through the parking lot or feel uncomfortable walking through the doors and seeing Giants Stadium on the scoreboard or typing the name of the place into my computer. The feeling of indifference will change for me, a member of the largest Jewish community in the country, if the new $1.6 billion state-of-the-art palace the Giants and Jets are constructing is called Allianz Stadium. Allianz, the front-runner to secure the new stadium's naming rights, is an insurance and financial services company founded in Berlin in 1890 that moved to Munich in 1949 and had ties to Nazi Germany. Its CEO at the time, Kurt Schmitt, was Adolf Hitler's economics minister. It was the insurer of the Auschwitz death camp's facilities and personnel. Even if Allianz has tried to make restitution over the years to the families of the Holocaust victims, why should a football stadium be a reminder of the painful events that led to the murder of six million Jews? With so many Holocaust survivors in this area and ancestors of survivors or people who lost their parents or grandparents in concentration camps, it just makes no sense. "I am very upset," Holocaust survivor Earnest Michel said yesterday. "I would find the connection of naming the stadium in the name of a German insurance company a very, very serious act and that we as survivors would take exception to." Michel, 85, and still a football fan, is the former executive vice president of the UJA-Federation of New York. He was arrested in Germany in 1939 at the age of 16 - just because he was Jewish, he said - and spent the next 5-1/2 years in four different concentration camps before escaping. "I never saw my parents again," he said. "I don't know what insurance my parents had. I was a kid." His parents were arrested in 1940 and spent two years in a concentration camp in France before they were sent to Auschwitz. "They were gassed upon arrival," Michel said solemnly. "They were murdered upon arrival." His sister was arrested at the age of 11, also in 1939. Michel didn't see her again until 1955. Allianz has 11,000 employees in the United States, offices in New York and sponsors PGA senior golf tournaments and Formula One races. But it's the past that will prompt a damage-control campaign if Allianz remains the front-runner and wins the naming rights to the new Giants and Jets stadium. The Tisch family, which owns 50% of the Giants, is Jewish and very involved in Jewish philanthropy. Steve Tisch did not return a call last night for comment. A public affairs firm has been hired by the New Meadowlands Stadium Corp., to perform due diligence on the companies interested in naming and sponsorship rights. It has been working overtime on Allianz. "In this instance, NMSC management and the teams' owners became sensitive to Allianz's history," Alice McGillion of the NMSC said in a statement. "This thorough review also found that Holocaust experts, former government officials and leading Jewish and survivor groups believe that Allianz has made determined efforts towards restitution and continues to do so today." Even if Allianz, which has its name on a stadium in Munich, is willing to pay more than anybody else - perhaps as much as $30 million per year - could Giant owners Tisch and John Mara and Jet owner Woody Johnson take a little less money and be a little more sensitive? There seems to be some testimony that Allianz has tried to do the right thing over the years, but why would the Giants and Jets even subject themselves to such scrutiny? And in these times when America is losing its value around the world, can't the naming rights to one of the most visible sports venues be sold to an American company? Neither the Giants nor Jets offered comment yesterday, but combined with the recent PSL announcements, the news about Allianz's potential involvement is likely to be met with resistance in parts of the Jewish community. "It's outrageous, to be honest with you," said Dr. Barry Steinberg of Chappaqua. "It's like adding insult to injury, salt to the wound." Steinberg's father is a Holocaust survivor. "He won't drive a German car," he said. Steinberg had been a Jets season ticket holder since 1980 when his seats were in the last row at Shea Stadium. He elected not to renew his tickets this year, the anticipation of PSLs and the lack of a dome on the new stadium playing a part in his decision. Even though his seats won't be part of the PSL program, he doesn't second-guess walking away. The firm representing the team has spoken with Jewish leaders. If the deal is made with Allianz, they know there is an obligation to explain the background of the company. "This opens a very, very serious problem to us survivors," Michel said. And to those who sat in the upper deck on opening day.
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#5. To: X-15 (#0)
I was reading Paul Fussell's "Thank God for the Atomic Bomb" when I ran across his comment that the Nazis killed "four million" Jews, Poles, Catholics, etc. Fussell is a famous writer and even he doesn't fall for that Six Million Jews nonsense.
"six million" is a jewish religion: http://www.vho.org/GB/Books/tfh/3. html Regarding the growing importance of the American Jewish Committee, a 1931 summary report by its secretary Joseph C. Hyman stated:[52] "Small in its beginnings and regarded as merely a temporary committee for emergency aid, the organization has evolved into the greatest relief agency in Jewish history. In its primary results, it meant the physical saving of millions of Eastern European Jews." Another American Jewish Committee's explanation was more restrained:[53] "As soon as the World War [One] started and it was obvious that a large part of the War would be fought in the zone in which six or seven million Jews lived, particularly Poland, Russia and Galicia, many worthy people started organizations to collect funds for the sufferers in the War zones." The story of the holocaust of up to six million European Jews didn't originate with World War Two. In fact, a very similar scenario was played out in somewhat less flamboyant terms during World War One and its aftermath. After World War One it was reported as news that five million, over five million, even six million Jews in Europe were sick or dying in a holocaust from starvation, horrible epidemics, and a malignant persecution. The following focuses especially on the World War One fund raising drives. These selected campaigns by major Jewish advocacy groups may offer historical significance both on their own and in terms of the post World War Two Holocaust industry. Holocaust is a World War One word. Holocaust was used during and after World War One to describe what was going on in Europe and what allegedly happened to the Jews of Europe during and after that war. While the stories that are today referred to as "the Holocaust" weren't called a holocaust during or even for decades after World War Two, the word holocaust was used while World War One was happening and thereafter. It was called a holocaust, it was called the greatest tragedy the world has ever known and it was called the greatest need the world has ever known. Until 1917, the leader of the Jewish community in New York, Jacob Schiff, repeatedly called for an end to "this holocaust".[54] In 1919, the American Hebrew magazine used the word holocaust in describing the plight of European Jewry in an article written under the byline of a former Governor of New York State.[55] Yehuda Bauer wrote in My Brother's Keeper, an authorized history of the Joint Distribution Committee of Jewish War Sufferers, that[56] "the destruction of European Jewry during World War Two has obliterated the memory of the first holocaust of the 20th century in the wake of the First World War."
#9. To: X-15. Deniers all (#8)
Just stop, we are sick of your whining and lying.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latestmurder of six million Jews?
#8. To: Turtle (#5)
(Edited)
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