Founders - #223 Unstoppable: Siggi Wilzig's Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend

Episode Date: December 29, 2021

What I learned from reading Unstoppable: Siggi Wilzig's Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend by Joshua M. Greene.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----Never give up. Only death is permanent. Everything else can be fixed.I couldn't take such talk about not coming out alive. I didn't want to hear it. Whenever my mind told me I was not going to survive, the Almighty told me to keep going. So I stayed away from the others.Because I could outwit the guards, I always felt superior to them. I hated them. I hated their brutality, their inhuman behavior. I felt stronger, more intelligent, and I had confidence in myself from childhood. So even though they had the guns and did all the killing, I felt superior. It was obviously a touch of arrogance, and some of it was justified and some not justified, but even in that totally hopeless condition I looked down on all of them.It was clear that Americans were alive in every sense, moving purposefully toward some vision of tomorrow. He liked that. He would do that, too: grasp opportunities and not allow the darkness of the past to rob him of a bright future.Even smart chickens shit on their own feathers!When Naomi found out her husband was purchasing shares of Wilshire on a regular basis, she chided him. "More stock? We can barely pay the bills and you're buying more stock?" Siggi made excuses, but he didn't stop buying. "I didn't see how this was going to change our life," Naomi said, remembering other stocks her husband had bought and other career moves he had made. "But that's how it turned out."You are looking at a man who had the foxlike instincts to survive history's darkest hour, a man who has no fear of adversity and who cannot be intimidated by overwhelming odds.Siggi had grown his bank from $180 million in assets to more than $4 billion.Siggi was the first person in history to sue the Federal Reserve.He's just happy to be alive. People thought he was nuts and laughed at him, but he didn't care.Less than a year after his death, his estate was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. “Not bad," as Siggi once said, "for a short, bowlegged Jew with flat feet who never graduated kindergarten and started with only $240 in his pocket."----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

When people ask me, how did you survive? I leave out a small thing, which isn't really a small thing. Any survivor who has a heart and brains lives with guilt that they survived and others didn't. My mother was sent straight to the gas chamber. My father was beaten to death. My sister Martha was murdered. My brothers Willie and Martin and Louie were murdered. And here I am, and they're all dead. Why them and not me? It was as if God had his hand on my shoulder to lead and guide me when I was all alone and in mortal danger. I remember everything since I was three and a half years old.

I can tell you the color of the stripes on my mother's sweater from when I was a little boy. It's good and bad, such a memory, because everything stays with you and you can't shut it off. I remember where we went fishing as boys, but I also remember what the barracks looked like in Auschwitz, and the capo with a stick in his hand, and everything he did. And that memory is very, very bad. It never goes away. He reached down and rolled up the leg of his pants. Look, see? Since the day of my liberation, I wear two pairs of socks. For the past 50 years, I've never left the house without two pairs of socks. That and a safety pin. Two pairs of socks because in the camps, a pair of socks could make the difference between living and dying. The deficiency of the body, the dirt, the filth. From a splinter, you would develop

rotting flesh. One splinter from a wooden shoe and you would die. And why a safety pin? A little pin could save your life in the camps if you need to hold up a piece of cloth as a bandage around your leg or keep your pants up. How did I remain alive for almost two years in Auschwitz? It wasn't by education. I didn't have any. It was the hand of the Almighty. I'm going to tell you something that I don't think I've ever said. As terrible as it sounds, I don't think I could live without the nightmares. It gives me a very ultra-realistic difference between life and death. It shows me what life is now, and I would never give that up. Never. Never. Never. That was an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Unstoppable,

Ziggy Wilzig's Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend, and it was written by Joshua M. Green. This story is unbelievable. Way to learn what Ziggy had to go through and endure and then what he was able to accomplish after the fact. I'm going to jump right into the book. The book starts when he's 21 years old. The year is 1947. He's arriving for the first time in America and he's about to be reunited with one of his sisters.

And so they're pulling into a port in New York City. It says, 21-year-old Ziggy had been nauseous, vomiting, and losing weight for most of the two-week ocean journey. And so they're pulling into a port in New York City. months of arrival. But here he was, alive and in America after having spent nearly two years in that concentration camp. So he's about to meet his sister Jenny, who escaped about a decade before the time that Ziggy arrives in America. And so I want to tell you a little bit about how why Ziggy actually helped save her life as just a young kid. So the family was being persecuted in this small town in Germany. They have to flee that town. They wind up in Berlin in 1936. You could not have had worse timing. And so as a little boy, he's realizing, hey, there's a lot of people fleeing. And he says, by listening in on the conversations in cafes, he learned that some people were managing to

escape Europe by securing exit visas. Sgy visited a dozen consulates looking for back entrances and open windows in his mission to steal the necessary documents. And so this is taking place 11 years before he's going to meet the sister that he's about to steal these documents so she can escape in New York. So it says Ziggy risked his life scaling embassy walls, breaking into offices and gathering up rubber stamps. With the stolen tools, he forged three visas and so at first he offers these visas to his parent two of these visas to his parents his mother says no i'm not going anywhere i was born here and i will die here she didn't know how prophetic that statement was because in let's see seven years from now they're going to be sent to auschwitz she's killed immediately and then a few weeks later his father is beaten to death and so he dies in Auschwitz as well so it says she declined I was born here and I will die here so Siggy gave

her visa to his older brother Joe who had already been a prisoner in a concentration camp so this is well before they get sent to Auschwitz but managed to get released Siggy figured Joe was already a marked man and needed to get out of Germany quickly his sister Jenny was pregnant and Siggy figured Joe was already a marked man and needed to get out of Germany quickly. His sister Jenny was pregnant, and Siggy insisted that she and her husband accept the two remaining visas. So those are the three visas they were able to escape. It says Jenny and Joe left Germany. They first traveled to—they left Germany, were able to emigrate to Shanghai in China. Then from Shanghai, they made their way to the Dominican Republic, and then from the Dominican Republic, they were able to get into America. And so it was very common during this time.

They hadn't had any way of speaking. Sigi had no idea what was going on in Jenny's life. They wound up meeting on the docks in New York City. So the book starts with him as a 21-year-old landing in America, flat broke. He's got like 200 bucks in his pocket. And then from there, he builds this what's going to wind up being a multiple hundred million dollar business empire. But that's the first chapter that's where the first chapter ends and then it goes back in time and it talks about his time in Auschwitz and everything

he has to go through to get back to this point um so he's winding meeting Jenny uh before I get to Auschwitz though I want to fill you in because this was just gives you an understanding of just how insane and brutal the experiences that this guy had to go through so he's meeting remember when he he gave her the visa she's pregnant they escape he hasn't seen her since then so it says uh jenny told ciggy the tragic news that her five-year-old daughter the one she was pregnant with had died of smallpox in shanghai before the journey to the dominican republic ciggy remembered watching hundreds of children die forced into gas chambers, their dead

bodies later thrown into the crematorium fires and made a mental inventory of his family. He was alive. Jenny and her husband were alive. Their brothers Joe and Erwin had survived. Everyone else was gone. He would calculate that 59 members of his family had perished. So through there's this Jewish refugee charity organization in America at the time providing all these refugees like a tiny little apartment. And so says the arrivals were escorted into the room.

Siggy being one of these people for many, it was the first time in years that they held a key to their own quarters. What now? He wondered. He had nothing, no resources and no credentials. He spoke with a thick German accent, had only a grade school education, and years of torture and starvation were still fresh in his mind. Yet here he was, still breathing, staring out the window at the snow-covered New York streets. The $200 in his pocket would soon disappear if he didn't find work. It was clear, and so this is what Ziggy's realizing, it was clear that Americans were alive in every sense of the word, world, word rather, excuse me, moving purposefully towards some vision of tomorrow. He liked that. He would do that too. Grasp opportunities and not allow the darkness of the past to rob him of a bright future.

His job was to grab whatever scraps remained from the rubble of his life and cobble them back together into an edifice of a yet-to-be-determined size and shape. Okay, so now we go back in time. We go to early 1930s Germany, what it was like to be Jewish at this point. We're going to see that even from the age of 14, he was working over 70 hours a week in forced labor. This is before he sent to Auschwitz. And it says, by 1936, Jewish children were no longer allowed to attend school. And Ziggy's schooling came to an abrupt end. Jewish businesses were taken over and Jewish men were sent to work in forced labor factories. So by the time he's 16, he's already been working in some of these factories for quite a while.

It says, in 1943, 16-year-old Ziggy was in the middle of his night shift at a lamp factory when an officer walked in and arrested him. For the past two years, he'd been working 12-hour shifts six days a week. And so this scene that's happening now where he's being arrested, his entire family and everybody that lives in their building and their neighborhood are pulled out. A few weeks ago, I read the biography of Steven Spielberg and Spielberg's foundation. He started a foundation to document when he was doing the movie schindler's list he was uh sort of foundation to document all of like the the holocaust survivors memories and so spielberg's actually in this book at the end because that foundation interviews and documents everything that that's ciggy right before ciggy

dies because ciggy dies he gets gets diagnosed with stage 4 blood cancer. And so before he dies, he winds up spending 10 or 20 hours just interviewing with Steven Spielberg's foundation and just reliving all of the memories and everything he had. But the reason I bring that up to you is because when I read his biography, Spielberg's biography a few weeks ago, I also re-watched schindler's list and there's a scene in that movie which is almost exactly what the scene and where i'm at in the book is so it says uh they pull everybody out of the building saying you know hey grab your stuff

they're not telling them where you're going bring all your supplies and so you see that when they get to auschwitz in the movie they have like all like all the boots go in a big pile all of the suitcases go in a big pile like the the the Nazis are taking all the jewelry and robbing them. And so it says in one of the crowds awaiting deportation, Sigi saw his father and his mother standing with his older brother, his older sister, her husband and their seven year old son. Sigi's other brothers were also were also there. These are the ones that get murdered. Everyone held suitcases and bags of food. In the distance, he saw a girl, a little girl around his age, or a little younger than him, rather. In the distance, he saw a girl in a dark green overcoat, looking alone and lost. He hurried

over to the girl in the dark green coat. She came from a poor family like his, and all she wanted was to hold his hand. I don't care what happens to me now, the girl whispered to him. And this is what he's saying. This is what Ziggy says about that she didn't know where her family was she had no one and she knew i wouldn't leave her so in schindler's list there's a girl in the red coat that's famous because it's all black and white and you see her walk as as this scenes are occurring and she's in the red coat in ziggy's scene she's a green coat. So they're ushered onto trains real quick and he says, unless you were there, you can't imagine how horrifying a nightmare it was.

So the train stops, they get out. Ziggy overheard other prisoners say the name of this place, Auschwitz. So everybody's separated. He doesn't know where his mom and dad are. He does not know where his siblings are. So a guard comes up to him. A guard came up to him a guard

uh came up to him how old are you he snapped 18 ziggy lied what profession master tool maker he lied again the guard pushed ziggy onto a line of prisoners on the left then pushed the girl in the green coat to the to a line on the right ziggy did not know that the line on the right was for prisoners selected to be killed and that almost all children under 18 that the line on the right was for prisoners selected to be killed, and that almost all children under 18 who were sent to the right, along with the younger children, the elderly, and the sick. Nor did he know that anyone without useful skills was also sent to the right to be killed. Where did, and this is, this is so, there's going to be a couple paragraphs like this one in the book,

where he's talking, like I just said just said the opening like the survivor was guilt like 59 members of my family perished why was i not one of them and so he says where did the impulse come from to lie claiming that he was 18 and a master toolmaker true he did have some toolmaking training in trade school but he never completed his schooling and never worked a day in his life as a tool maker the mystery of that impulse which surely saved him from the gas chamber would plague him for the rest of his life and then there's just so many paragraphs like this one i mean this is like very similar to again the parallel because it's fresh in my mind just re-watching it is schindler's list it says siggy again And then we have this testimony he's giving later in life, where he says, as a Jew growing up in Germany in those years, Siggy said, you expected to be beaten and mistreated, but a gas chamber, a crematorium, now that you didn't expect. The stench and the smoke from the chimneys and what they did to the

children, what they did to the children. I can still hear the screaming of children who were ripped away from their parents. The memories don't stop. To this day, I argue with the Almighty that if cries of children, he's saying this 50 years after it happened. Wait till I get to some of the memories he has at the end of the book when he's dying in the hospital. It's just, I don't know if I've ever read a book like this. The memories don't stop. To this day, I argue with the Almighty that if the cries of children would leave my ears, I would go more often to the synagogue. Flames shooting up from the crematorium, the horrible smell, the horrible smell. It was unbelievable. So in addition to reading this book, I was also watching documentaries on the Third

Reich and concentration camps. And I was on the phone with a friend right before I sat down to talk to you. And I said that the impact of this book had on me. I woke up knowing I was going to record today. And I told a friend of mine, I have nothing to complain about. I'm healthy. I have a roof over my head. I have air conditioning, heating, cooling. I have a roof over my head. I have air conditioning, heating, cooling. I have an espresso machine that, that makes espresso anytime I want it. I have a food full of, of, uh, excuse me, a refrigerator full of food. I have clothing. Like you just read, you expose yourself to these stories and you just realize it helps put things into perspective of how good you have it and how bad and drastic and tragic life can get at certain points of

history in certain places on the planet it's just it's unbelievable so i want to go into like his mindset there's a line in a song that i love and i took a screenshot of the lyric page and keep it on my phone it says the point i'm making is the mind is a powerful place and what you feed it can affect you in a powerful way and so something that saves ziggy is the fact that like he's engaged in psychological warfare and he compares and contrasts like his mindset like he's like i can't allow myself to think that i won't survive i won't give up no matter how bad i want to i'm going to survive i'm going to get out of this place um and so part of that is the fact that ciggy even from a young age he has he has an extreme amount of self-confidence. And this helps him a lot in his business life later on, where he takes over an oil company. He knew nothing about oil companies. He takes over a bank,

knew nothing about bank. He just assumed, hey, I can learn. I can figure these things out. And so what he realizes is like, hey, I'm smarter than these guards. And so the only asset I have, they have guns and they have clubs and they have uh clubs and they can beat me and they can throw me in a gas chamber like i've got to use my mind and so he says the guards were sadist and they look for any reason to kill the nazis opened the prisons of germany and brought hardened criminals into the camps and made them masters over kids like me remember he's 16 at this time he says because i because i could outwit the guards i always felt superior to them think about how crazy this might like what an extreme mindset you have to have.

They've taken everything from you. They've separated you from your family. I don't know at this point. He doesn't know his mom's dead because his mom gets killed the first day. He's going to find that out after. But they've taken your family, taken all your possessions. They've shaved your head. They take away your clothes.

They make you enforce labor. And you're like, I'm superior to you. So he says, I always felt superior to them. I them i hated their brutality their inhuman behavior i felt stronger more intelligent and i had confidence in myself from childhood so even though they had guns and did all the killing i felt superior this is what i mean about the mind is a powerful place and what you feed it can affect you in a powerful way it was obviously a touch of arrogance and some of it was justified and some of it not justified but even in the totally hopeless condition i look down on all of them and then there's some just background that the author gives us between 1.1 and 1.3 million people were murdered in auschwitz so he's constantly going up

to the guard saying hey i have this skill he lies about his age, says, oh, yeah, you need somebody to make tools? I can make tools. You need anything that they said they needed? He'd say, yep, I know how to do that. So they need help in a hospital. I mean, that's like a – and he makes the point. It's not a hospital, you'd think. Like they're barely keeping people alive.

So he lies his way into a job at a hospital by saying that he has experience as a nurse. The reason he does that is because it's in the middle of winter, this job's inside, and so it saves him from laboring in the snow and a lot of people freezing to death and dying. And it's because of this, he's going to be reunited temporarily, and he's actually going to see his father die. So it says, the first day in the hospital, the kapos made me load Jewish patients onto a truck. I still have a picture in my mind of Jewish patients cursing me for not lying to the guards, for not telling them that this one is healthy and that one is healthy. The prisoners thought that a male nurse like me had power to save them. I had no such power. I just loaded them onto a truck. I knew where they

were going, but I couldn't bear the idea that I was sending them to their death. So I told myself the truck was taking them to recover at some other hospital or maybe some other camp. Three hours later, the truck came back with their clothing. They were all dead. And then this is just, this is, I hate to use that word again, but this is just unbelievable what I'm about to read to you.

One day, a doctor took Siggy to an area of the infirmary where he saw patients on the verge of death. Siggy looked around and there on one of the lower bunks was his father. He was badly beaten to a point that he wept, and then it says Siggy wept as he recalled this moment and then continued. I knew that he wouldn't make it. My father's last words were, Son, who's going to take care of you? Don't worry, I have friends, Siggy reassured him.

The death sergeant came the next day with prisoners carrying a big vat of potatoes. Imagine that, you're starving to death and here you see potatoes like your grandmother used to make. You would give your right arm for it. The guards stood there and ordered me to feed it to the prisoners. And we gave these dying people 10 to 15 large spoons of these raw potatoes. Siggy walked around the room, lading out portions to the sick prisoners, including his father. One older prisoner shoved the ladle away. That older prisoner said to me, what are you, an idiot? I'm not an idiot, I told him. And he says to me, yes,

yes you are. You don't know what that, what's, you don't know what, what's what. Come back tomorrow and you'll see. And the next morning, 80% of them were dead with their stomachs bloated. They had been bleeding all night from it. And there was my father, dead. The potatoes were poisoned. Poisoned potatoes. I think I helped kill my father. Ziggy covered his father with a blanket and walked away before prisoners arrived to cart the bodies to the crematorium. I wanted to remember him the way he looked in life. And unfortunately, it gets even worse.

A few weeks later, word reached Siggy that his mother had been sent to the gas chamber the day she arrived. And so this is an example of what I mentioned earlier. He just refused to believe that he was doomed. The older prisoners are an example of what I mentioned earlier. He just refused to believe that he was doomed. The older prisoners are just saying, hey, give up. It's useless. We're all going to die. Just go and electrocute yourself on the fence. They told him, you won't survive. Better run now and grab the electric wire. I couldn't take such talk about not coming out alive, Ziggy said. I didn't want to hear it. Whenever my mind told me I was not going to survive, the Almighty told me to keep going. So I stayed away from others.

In the hospital, Ziggy had met a prisoner doctor whom he described as a bit of a philosopher. Ziggy told the doctor, so he talks about choices inside Auschwitz posed like a dilemma for prisoners because you didn't know if the information was dependable or not. Like, oh, take that job, don't take the other job. Stay away from that capo, don't go next to this cap the right the quote-unquote right choice could wind up being fatal and so he's asking the doctor like what should i do uh the ss are trying to recruit me because they need uh carpenters but he didn't know if it was like a trick and so he says i told the doctor about the carpenter training in the main camp and asked what he thought i can't tell you what to do the doctor said it could be just as bad over there or worse. And the reason I'm bringing this to your attention is because what the doctor says here, he takes this advice not only now, but he takes this advice for the rest of his life.

You're a smart young fellow, the doctor said. Follow your instincts. That was advice Siggy would remember for the rest of his life. So he survives almost two years. This is now 1945. There's actually Stalin's forces, the Russian forces, are actually coming into where Auschwitz is. And so they're actually having to get all the prisoners and make them do what is what we know after the fact is a death march. And so really, the reason I'm going to read this section to you is because this is an illustration that Ziggy constantly had to make life and death decisions under a great amount of uncertainty. And so him and he's got a small group of friends or this guy Lothar, which is going to move to America too. He's going to wind up surviving. He changed his name to Larry.

So Larry went on to save his life. So they wound up being like really good friends for the rest of their life. But it says the night before the death marches from Auschwitz began, when the other prisoners were asleep, Sigi and Lothar and four other men crept out and hid in the mud under the barracks, huddled together in their blankets, watching fires burn in the distance, and debated what to do. Rumor had it that the Germans were going to blow up the camp and leave no evidence of their crimes. One man said that, quote-unquote, healthy prisoners, those who could still walk, would be marched out at dawn. Another man said it was impossible to stay hidden under the barracks. Who knew how long they could survive in the bitter cold? Better they all agreed to take the chances on the march rather than freeze to death hiding. They crawled back inside the barracks

and waited for morning. And so that winds up being the right choice. They were unsure, but the healthy prisoners, the ones that could walk, were forced to march. Now here's the problem. This is January. It's freezing cold. They've been, I was going to say living, they've been, I guess, existing on less than 700 calories a day. So you're going to have, it says, they go from nearly 6,000 people start the march. And five days later, they get to this other camp it's a I can't pronounce

it's like Mauthausen and only 1600 so 1600 people survive out of 6000 Ziggy and Larry being one of them but this is where he winds up being separated from his best friend now remember this part in a few minutes because it's unbelievable what happens to larry and so i'll get there in a minute so it says uh ziggy larry and some other survivors of the death march collapsed on the barrack floor larry ziggy said in a weak voice when they ask you what you can do say and he's almost dead uh ziggy had to wind up like almost carrying him on this march and the reason he did this is and he was pissed off at the other people that were supposed to help because larry had saved a bunch of people's lives

and so people offered him hey keep going they passed him in the death march and they told larry like hey keep it up you can do they offered words of encouragement but they wouldn't actually help carry him and ziggy actually wind up helping carry him he He's like, I have this. He saved my life. I have this obligation to do the same for him. So it says, and so his friend is extremely weak. It says, when they ask you what you can do, say you're a metal worker or a toolmaker, anything they can use for the war effort. Don't forget. Yeah, yeah, Larry mumbled through a haze of fever, hunger, and exhaustion. I'll tell them that.

Over and over and over again, I told him to say that, Sig explained. Now, he's fast forwarding because when he gets to America, he actually, one of the first stops, he goes and visits Larry's parents. And so he's telling them this story in the book. And so he's saying over and over again, I told him to say that, Sig explained to his parents in frustration years later. If you say you're a metal worker, they're not going to kill you. He says, yes, yes, I'm going to say it. I'm going to say it. And then he doesn't say it. He doesn't say it. The Germans shipped him to one of the worst sub camps.

That is how 18-year-old Ziggy lost track of his best friend with no way of knowing if either of them would survive. And if they did, whether or not they would ever find each other again. So they're at this other camp. I think they're in Austriaria if i'm not mistaken and this is like two months later and everybody around him is still dying and this is just this gives you an idea of what he had to survive and what he had experienced he was shoved into a barrack with four other men they all collapsed from exhaustion and in the morning ciggy woke

to find that the other men had died in his in his sleep the second night another died then another until he was the only one left alive in his bunk. Now look what he has to do here. He arranged the dead bodies next to him as though they were asleep, so that when rations were handed out, there would be more stale bread for him to eat. The smell of dead bodies filled the room. And then it is amazing how everything changed overnight and it's not because the nazis suddenly said hey you know oh we we realize the error of our ways they're

they're constantly getting pressure and so now the allies this is american soldiers have actually are penetrating the camp and so the what i just the story i just told you ciggy wakes up the next morning and the germans are all gone it's just the prisoners and so it says the next morning ciggy slowly raised himself up and peered out of the barrack window the germans were gone and then the distance on a hillside was a soldier in a uniform unlike any that he'd ever seen before as ciggy watched american tanks and armored cars crash through the gates prisoners emerged slowly from the barracks shuffling slowly forward and shig and ciggy stumbled along with them on the day of his liberation 19 year old ciggy

was skin and bones and weighed less than 90 pounds he was nearly dead from exhaustion exhaustion malnutrition and pneumonia and so this is what i what i just mentioned earlier what a story so the u.s army they evacuate the survivors from the camp that ziggy's in they send him to a red cross hospital in austria and he's reunited with his best friend it gets even crazier his best friend's parents had escaped i don't know i don't think they ever explained how they separated from their son but their their families in america where their son is lost somewhere in Europe during the war, right? So it says, Siggy and Larry were reunited.

Fate had assigned them to the same hospital. Larry showed Siggy a newspaper clipping that featured a photo of himself on the day he was liberated. One of the first American soldiers to enter the camp had taken a photo of Larry. When the soldier returned home, he sold... This is so crazy. Just imagine being in his parents' shoes with what I'm about to read to you. When the soldier returned home,

he sold the photo to the New York Post and the newspaper ran it on the front page. That's how Larry's parents learned their son had survived the Holocaust, by seeing his photo on the front page of the newspaper. Can you believe that? Oh my goodness. Okay. So this story gets even crazier. The very next paragraph. So, oh my goodness. Okay. Have you ever seen the movie Inglourious Bastards with Brad Pitt directed by Quentin Tarantino? It's based on true events, obviously fictionalized account of true

events, but it's these soldiers, these Jewish soldiers that volunteered to go hunt Nazis Siggy does something very similar to this it's not exactly the same because he was recruited he's recruited because he speaks all kinds of languages I think he knows German Polish and Russian if I'm not mistaken I could I might be wrong about that and it's not like he's completely fluent as he is in German but he knows enough so there is this thing called the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps okay and so they're gonna hire survivors of the the concentration camps to go hunt Nazis and SIGI volunteers and this is how he gets he winds up serving it's called the CIC the Counterintelligence Corps it's a part of the U.S. Army. He winds up serving. It's called the CIC, the Counterintelligence Corps. It's a part of the U.S. Army, okay? He winds up serving them for two years.

They get him the, like, past immigration and give him a free ticket to get on a boat and get. That's how he gets to New York. That's how the story starts, where he lands in New York and he's meeting his sister Jenny. It's because of what he does here. And so it says, once they regained sufficient strength, they went to work for the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps. So Ziggy talks about that. I got a permission to form an armed backup team. Ziggy's team was given a Jeep and sent out the door.

Let's go hunt some Nazis, Ziggy told his crew. This gave him the chance to capture some of their former Nazi oppressors. And so they wind up going into all these little small towns in austria and everywhere else they're just hunting for a lot of uh nazis like flat other parts of europe some went to switzerland some went to south america some wind up staying there so he winds up helping catch so joseph goebbels is like this well-known um i talked about him a lot on the churchill podcast i did and so he was like the minister of propaganda for the nazi party well his brother they caught him but they couldn't find i I know, I think Joseph killed himself, if I'm not mistaken. He had a brother named Hans, they were hunting. Ziggy's crew, these Jewish

Nazi hunters, wind up staking out his house and finding him. The team rushed up, handcuffed him, and then drove him to CIC headquarters for questioning and so he winds up there's a picture of Hans Goebel which is Joseph's brother being interrogated by the CIC and then I think he's if I'm not mistaken he stands trial for um for war crimes they send him to life imprisonment and I think and then he dies of I can't remember if he kills himself in any ways it doesn't matter the point being is that this diggy's unbelievable story gets even more unbelievable. The fact that they've catched Joseph Goebel's brother and wind up turning him over to the Americans. And so I want to get to like what he does when he gets to America. I want to wrap this whole section up in November 1947. As a thank you note, or excuse me, as a thank you from the CIC for nearly two years of service.

21 year old Ziggy received free passage to New York. On December 12th, he arrived in America looking for work and a new life. Okay, so now we go back to where the story began. 21 years old, no education, thick accent, 200 bucks in his pocket, no skills really to speak of, and a mind tormented by just witnessing the the darkest period of maybe human history and so he's going to try to take any job i'm gonna there's there's a lot going on in these sections i'm really going to give you like the the top highlights obviously really think you should i highly recommend reading the book i think you there's a lot of value in actually reading the entire book but he starts

off very first job he's hired to the reason i'm going to read all this to you or at least the highlights to you is the fact that this is just something we see over and over again it's just like you don't know what the future is going what the future holds you can only connect the dots looking backwards to quote steve jobs so what he would ziggy has to do is just like okay let me take the first opportunity his first opportunity is shoveling snow for two dollars a day remember he dies with a net worth of hundreds of millions of dollars okay but he shoveling snow for $2 a day. Remember, he dies with a net worth of hundreds of millions of dollars, okay? But he shovels snow? Okay, now I'm making $2 a day.

That's $14 a week. How can I do a little better than that? So then he takes that first opportunity, saves a little bit of money, gets a second job. His second job, now he's working. Remember, this point in American history, it's a huge industrial base. There's just sweatshops all over Manhattan

making all kinds of different products. And so Siggy's just going to take jobs in places, you know, they're, they wind up being very bad for your health, but he's doing whatever he can to try to make money, just get to that next step, that next opportunity. So it says his second job was working in a sweatshop in downtown Manhattan that manufactured leather goods. So now he's making, he goes from making $14 a week to now he's making $28.50 a week. His sister's working for a bow tie manufacturer at a bow tie factory. He's like, hey, can you give me a job there? Hoping to earn a better living. He convinced her to introduce him to her boss at the bow tie factory. How much are you earning? Mrs. Friedman asked $36 a week,

Siggy answered a 20% exaggeration. And I won't work less for that work less than that. So that she goes, Okay, I'll pay you 36 bucks a week. So he goes from $14 a week to 2850 a week. Now he's making $36 a week. And now he's working in a bow tie sweatshop. So then his brother is actually working for a company that that manufactures neckties. And so he gets a job there. He's like, Okay, I can make more money if I sell. Instead of working in a sweatshop, I'll become a salesman. And that's really the way to think of Ziggy.

His greatest skill in life is the fact that he was a master salesman. He was a very gifted speaker. We'll go into more details like how he applies that to actually take over oil and banking companies. So he says, okay, I'm going to work as a necktie salesman. Why? Because every sale earns him a commission. His friend that saved his life in the concentration camp and the one that then Ziggy saves his life on that death march. Larry's also there. So he convinces the necktie company to hire Larry as well.

They worked there for a little bit. Then they hear about this other company called National Pictures. So everything I'm telling you is taking place over a lot. There's a lot more detail. I'm just trying to give you to get to the point where he actually starts because the subtitle of the book is he became a wall street legend so i got to get to the point where he starts studying the stock market and that's how he's going to overtake these companies uh so then they find national pictures they sell like door-to-door stuff so he starts selling stuff door-to-door sells stuff like blankets they have these like lights that you sit on top of your tv like just like little trinkets that you know random things that people might want so he does

that for a while he saves up money then he's going to start his own company and this is where he actually winds up meeting uh his his wife and so it says she learned that her beau or her boo was entrepreneurial and had recently started a business with another refugee manufacturing change purses which they sold to pocketbook and handbag factories she assumed her parents would be impressed by such an ambitious young man her parents were shocked so he you know no education not a lot of money i should tell you he's 27 years old at this point in the story so he's been in america for six years his wife comes from a extremely wealthy like uh like upper class jewish family and so i've written to myself on this page he can't catch a break and we're gonna see why uh she she assumed her parents would be impressed by such an ambitious young man

her parents were shocked they thought of their daughter dating a refugee a man with no money or education was intolerable so they wound up having to elope. Her parents don't know that. Three weeks later, Siggy showed up at their house to attend the sweet 16 party of Naomi, that's his wife's younger sister. He rang the bell when Naomi's mother opened the door and saw him. This is what I mean about he can't catch a break. She lunged at him. She lunged at Siggy and smacked him in the face.

Get out, she yelled. You're not welcome here. One of her guests, Rabbi Greenstein, grabbed her arm. What are you doing, he said. This man is a Holocaust survivor. You should welcome him. I don't care, Naomi's mother screamed. Get him out of my house.

And so the reason I bring that to your attention, I think it's actually really important. Because especially right after I just finished rereading Ed Thorpe's biography and autobiography and I told you I think like he's out of anybody else who studied on the podcast he's the closest I feel got to like mastering life and really like had a it was successful in every area of his life um and something Ed Thorpe had where he was very supportive he's like listen me and my wife decided we're going to spend like we're going to give our kids all the education they can they can possibly want and teach them how to think for themselves and then whatever life they choose for themselves

we're going to support them and i think ed did that because he realized hey the paths in my life where i was able to choose for myself like the ones i like i what i learned on my own what own, what I wanted to pursue on my own. Those are the things I found most satisfying. And I was the best at as far as and if somebody said, Hey, no, don't do that job that you really want to do take this other job because other people might think it's more prestigious or hey, don't study the subject you're genuinely interested in study this subject because other people might, you know, think that it's better, you might make more money in the future, he realized like that those were dead end paths, and that you would never truly excel at something that you weren't, it wasn't like self directed, self driven. So what's interesting to

me is the prejudice that his wife's parents had for him saying, Hey, you're a refugee, you're not good enough for my daughter, he did, he winds up doing the same thing when his kids are grown, and they want to date other people like his. His daughter wants to date this other person she actually loves. And he's like, no, that that that that guy is not good enough for you. Like basically he makes that same mistake. And so his Ziggy's story is extremely inspiring. Don't get me wrong, but he's also flawed. There's a lot of things he does where I think like we can learn like, OK, let's not do that.

And I don't want to sit here and like, you know, criticize somebody that went through what he went through. I can't like I can't even begin to imagine what that was like. But I just want to I think it's important. It's like, hey, I went through this terrible experience. I didn't like the fact that, you know, I was uneducated, but I'm ambitious. I'm working hard. i will i will provide a great life for my family your daughter who i want to marry me right like why didn't you learn not to do that when that was done to you he would only want his daughters and his sons to marry like people they had to be i obviously they have to be jewish that's that was obviously very important to him he yells like if you fall in love with

the Gentile like I they should have died in Auschwitz like he's an extreme character there's a lot of stuff in the book like that right but his point is like no they have to be Ivy League educated it was like but you weren't Ivy League educated like isn't it more important that they're intelligent and like okay what if they you weren't it's not that you weren't smart enough to get to the Ivy League but you were in Auschwitz when other people were college age. Like, I just am surprised he didn't make that connection, I guess is my point. So eventually his in-laws do come around, they realize, okay, this, he's very motivated, he works extremely hard, he's a workaholic, that's, he doesn't really have, like, that's it, he's, if he's awake, he's working, you know, he's got demons, he's's just that's what his focus is on and his entire life

is dedicated to that and so he winds up working his his uh in-laws own like cemeteries and uh like they manufacture what is like headstones bronze and headstones so he winds up running part of their business the reason i'm bringing to your that to your attention is because in his spare time as he's running this business he's making a little bit of money. He starts studying the stock market. And this is going to lead him to the career that like where he built his business empire is by doing this. So it says in his spare time, he studied the stock market. And with the money earned from selling bronze plaques and granite headstones, he purchased modest amounts of stocks.

One of his investments was in Wilshire oil company it was a company in texas at willshire seemed like a safe bet it was a small company and its stock was affordable and then this also gives you something that uh an insight into how he ran his businesses later on he did not believe in diversification and he was obsessed with accumulating stock so it says when naomi found out her husband was purchasing shares of Will Steyer on a regular basis, she chided him. More stock? We can barely pay the bills and you're buying more stock. Siggy made excuses, but he didn't stop buying. And this winds up being the turning point in his life because he buys the stock. He winds up going.

They're really entrenched in the Jewish community in New Jersey at the time. And so they go to this like farewell dinner and he's going to meet this guy, this older entrepreneur named Sol Diamond. And meeting Sol Diamond changes Ziggy's life forever. So it says, among the guests was a businessman named Sol Diamond, a 78-year-old man who was one of New York's

most prominent entrepreneurs. Diamond had been a member of the New York Stock Exchange and after retiring, he parlayed his familiarity with the market to become a major shareholder in mining companies and other businesses. He was discreet about his business success. He refrained from bragging, dressed without ostentation, and drove a 20-year-old Cadillac. It still runs. Why would I change it? His associates described him as a low-key multimillionaire who didn't try to get on TV or radio or in the papers. He just

accumulated stocks. So they went up meeting, they went up talking, they discovered they both own stock in Wilshire Oil Company of Texas. Diamond said he was, so now Diamond's telling Ziggy this, he's saying he's concerned over Wilshire's failure to realize its potential. The company has a number of deals cooking that could lead to substantial increase in revenues, provided the right person was at the helm. The company needed fresh energy and a charismatic leader. He could lead the takeover himself, Diamond said, but he was approaching 80. Might Ziggy consider leading the charge? And so Diamond puts this idea in Ziggy's mind.

Ziggy's, you know, let's see, 40 years younger than Diamond. He's like, why don't we accumulate stock and then let's do a takeover and then let's pursue, be more aggressive in pursuing the opportunities that the current ownership is letting lag. That is essentially the idea that Diamond gives to Ziggy that Ziggy runs with. And so this is going to be the beginning of them plotting to take over this oil company. Ziggy was excited by the offer. His options in business so far had only been sales, which limited his income. Heading up an oil company would put him in the big leagues where serious money could be made.

He knew nothing. And this is the story of his life. He knew nothing about natural resources, business finance, or how to take over a company. But he had no hesitation accepting Soul Diamond's offer. In Ziggy, remember, he's like, oh, I'm a master toolmaker. I'm a nurse.'m a nurse i'm the same thing he's just like well i'll just figure it out i'm going to it doesn't matter i don't know how to do it now i can learn how to do it uh in ziggy diamond saw a real go-getter who would who would hike to the ends of the earth if need be uh soul diamond said he would back ziggy financially if ziggy would take up the task of overturning the man who was then president of Wilshire. Ziggy welcomed the challenge and the opportunity to show the

world that he knew more about business than people gave him credit for. Meanwhile, with as much money as their middle class income would allow, Ziggy continued to purchase shares in Wilshire. I didn't see how this was going to change our life, his wife said, remembering other stocks her husband had brought her and other career moves that he had made. But that's how it turned out. And so that's another point where she makes like, yeah, but you said this about other stocks. Yeah, you said this about other business opportunities. He had way more jobs than I listed off to you. And I think that's the great thing, too, where he just had this perseverance like, OK, I went down. I took a risk. It was a dead end. I fell down. I'll get back up, dust myself off, try again. I'm going to go after another opportunity and just go. And he was just, this guy is relentless over and over again. And so I don't

want to like, I don't want to mislead you. Like this is a, this takes years for him to accomplish what's happening here with the oil company. And part of this is the fact that he was just a gifted salesman. And so he was already part of this community. He went to every, like he did this on like a grassroots individual by individual basis. That's also part of the reason he went to every like he did this on like a grassroots individual by individual basis that's also part of the reason why it took so long uh to take control of wilshire or a company ziggy needed to purchase large amounts of company stock for years he aggressively solicited family friends and acquaintances enrolling everyone he could he could to purchase shares of wilshire and join his investor group.

And so this is what I was referencing earlier. He's just a master salesperson. Ziggy laid out his proposal. If they joined him in purchasing Wilshire stock, eventually they could take control of the company, run it tight or run it right, excuse me, and generate substantial earnings for shareholders. The way Ziggy explained it, the plan made perfect sense. That was his gift, an ability to convince anyone of anything. People were mesmerized by him. You couldn't refuse Siggy. He attracted people like bees to honey. Everybody was glued to his words and they swallowed everything he served up. I ended up buying some stock at $7

a share and so did my father, my son-in-law, his brother, and also invested heavily. And we all made a profit. We were convinced by Ziggy's salesmanship. Otherwise, we wouldn't have bought the stock. Who had ever heard of the Wilshire Oil Company of Texas? By the winter of 1964, that means Ziggy would be 38 years old, Ziggy and his small group of investors had finally acquired enough stock that he was now in position to address the Wilshire board in person and assess and assess their response to his takeover bid and so it took years to work himself into a position to get to the position he's at right now and then it goes extremely fast from

from here really quick I just want to pull out one paragraph from this meeting he's going to have with the Wilshire board because this really gives you a look into how he views himself so it says gentlemen you're looking at a man who had the fox-like instincts to survive history's darkest hour a man who has no fear of adversity and who cannot be intimidated by overwhelming odds the almighty has given me a second chance at life along with the skills to make great fortunes so they own such a large percentage they get i think two seats on the board he winds up being able to influence management he's eventually going to be elected ceo of this company this happens all within a year uh siggy siggy's plan i'm fast forwarding a little bit siggy's plans were riskier but the alternative

he concluded was to allow wickshire to continue sinking uh let him run with it mcdonald who was running the company told the board run with it ciggy did he would implement new projects and increase the number of wells he made every attempt to look like an operator uh the first year ciggy moved forward with the development of 11 exploratory wells and then he winds up benefiting from this this unfortunately the the death of the ceo of the company um and he really the thing way to think about this is he's just extreme way more risk on than the the previous management of the company was wilshire's president died suddenly of a heart attack the board elected ciggy as wilshire's new president and ceo it was a remarkably fast rise for ciggy one that had begun just three

years after meeting soul diamond and only one year after Siggy's first meeting with the Wilshire board. And so now he finds himself as the president and CEO of an oil company, an oil company that used to be owned by Canadians, that's in Texas, that he's running from New Jersey. His message to stockholders was positive and exciting. So now he's essentially, once he becomes the CEO, instead of selling them to buy the stock, he's selling them on the dream, the dream of what this company, not what the company is now, but what it will soon become. His message to stockholders was positive and exciting.

The engineers were optimistic about Wilshire's future. The company had great potential. And while not yet profitable, Wilshire owned leases on multiple properties ripe for development. New technologies were coming online. Opportunities in the oil industry abounded. And now, with the right people to helm, the future would be prosperous. This is all what Siggy's telling them, right? Stockholders picked up on a not-too-subtle subtext.

The old board members had dragged the company down, men in their senior years who lacked the drive and fresh vision to turn potentials into reality. Their average age was between 80 and dead, Siggy once commented. And this is such a great, like a great line. Like a racehorse pointing his nose at a gap in the field and bursting through to take the lead, Siggy grabbed the moment and ran. So this is another example of what I meant. Like, okay, I'm going to grab the first opportunity that's shoveling snow. Then I'm going to make bow ties.

Then I'm going to be a door-to-door salesman. I'm just going to do every single thing. I'm going to get to the next opportunity. Once I get to that opportunity, I'm going to look around. Where's the next place of advancement? So they're doing well. They're starting to – some of these wells are working out. But he's like, this is taking too slow.

He's like, we need cash. We need a lot more cash because the more cash we can get, the more wells we can drill, the more wells we can drill, the more money we're going to make. And so this is where he gets the idea. He's like, we need to buy a bank. Like the audacity of this guy is just amazing. In Siggy's mind, it was not enough.

Although these gains are very gratifying. I'm fast forwarding, let's see, I think four years in the story. Your management is not satisfied. Since the growth potential of the company has not yet been realized, Siggy's energy and ambition knew no bounds. If Wilshire was going to keep growing, the company would need a steady stream of cash. Why not buy a bank? Banks have lots of cash.

And so this idea of getting a bank bank he's going to wind up taking over this this small at the time a small bank i think they have like 100 million of assets by the time he dies when he right before he dies he runs the bank up until he dies they're going to have like four billion dollars of assets so it's called the trust company of new jersey and then it's referred in the book is by its initials tcnj there is a lot of detail in the book, but really this one page that I'm on is going to tell you, this like half page right here, is going to tell you why he wanted to own a bank. This is also going to get him in trouble later. I forgot to tell you, like I a bank, he's also the first person in American history to wind up suing the Federal Reserve. So there's just insane – and the reason they wind up suing him is because what he's about to do here – or they try to get him to divest the oil company from the bank later on.

But this is really why, like the idea that builds his, the reason I want to bring this to your attention is because this is the idea that Ziggy uses that builds his business empire. And so this is why he wants to own a bank. So he says, the more Ziggy learned about the nation's complex tax codes, the more he saw one great benefit in Wilshire taking over the bank. If Wilshire acquired 80% or more of the bank's stock, they could file a consolidated tax return. At that point, the bank would have the right to upstream to Wilshire's tax monies, otherwise due to the government. So what does that mean? Instead of writing a check

to the IRS for taxes owed on the bank's earnings, TCNJ could legitimately write a check for that amount to Wilshire. So Wilshire is the parent company. The oil company owns the bank. This upstreaming of tax money was perfectly legal and would provide Wilshire with abundant cash to finance its growth. So that's why he's doing it. He wants the profits of the bank, going to drill more wells and develop the oil company's earnings, right? The bank would become

what Siggy affectionately called his cash cow, supplying Wilshire with large steady streams of development money for opening new wells. Okay, I just said that. The arrangement would be a potential gold mine. To drill new wells and expand expand other oil companies had to constantly raise money from outside investors in complex limited partnership agreements the process was time consuming and risky by receiving funding from their own subsidiary wilshire could effectively avoid such risks and this is also one of the main points there was also a motive. No outside investors meant not having to share profits. So he does the exact same thing he did with the oil company. He starts accumulating, winds up getting 20%, then 25%, then just buying up.

He does tender offers. I think this takes like two and a half years, I want to say. And here's the punchline, and I just wrote this guy's unstoppable. At age 44, Siggy was now the youngest chairman and CEO of any major bank in the state. Now, what's interesting to me is from the rest of the book, and we're about halfway through the book at this point in the story, he's going to live another, let's say, 30 something like maybe 30 years, something like that. Almost all of the book is about the bank. You very rarely hear about he considered himself a banker and because like he winds up growing this this bank it's in

new jersey winds up growing it to be one of the biggest banks in in the state of new jersey and so this is what the most the vast majority of the book is about from here on in this is an example and so he would do things the reason i bring that an example. And so he would do things. The reason I bring that to your attention is because he would do things. There's a great essay by Paul Graham that says, do things that don't scale. And it talks about like how, when you're a small company, there's a counterintuitive ideas, like you should do things that don't scale. And those by doing things that don't scale, help you turn into a large company. And so I like, obviously, Siggy had never read that, that essay, but he understood that intuitively. And so his whole

modus operandi is doing things that don't scale, just like, hey, I took control of an oil company. And I did that by going door to door, every friend, every family member, every friend they had any family member they had, and literally going going one by one maybe groups of a handful of people at a time buy the stock buy the stock buy the stock this is what he does and he constantly recruits every single person if you're in the elevator with ciggy he's like where do you bank and he's going to convert you into a customer and then he's i mean he this guy's insane there is some things that are like over the line over the line like the way he talks to people and yells at them is not the nicest person as you could imagine. You'll be sitting in his office.

He'll ask you to see your wallet. Like, why do you want to see a wallet? And then he'll go through your wallet. And if he notices other ATMs, cards for other banks, he'll cut up the ATM cards right in front of you. You know, say you're not like he'll start crying, saying you're disloyal to him. How dare you? How could you possibly bank with somebody else after everything I've done for you? Like the larger point is that he's got some good ideas in this sense that he does things that don't scale because those things allow him to grow into like a larger bank.

It's going to by spoiling your customers, which I'll get to in a minute. They bring you more customers. So this is just I left myself is like we need more of this. What he's about to do here which again from a financial aspect doesn't make sense but if somebody did this for you if a business did this for you you're going to tell other people almost everybody that needs banking services what they did for you so he winds up walking in at this point he's running the bank he he's on like he is in the bank all the time he's traveling around to every single

branch like he's still doing like teller work like he is completely never loses the connection to the customer another smart thing he does so it says he walks in and sees this like woman like crying in in um and like she one of his employees is trying to help her and he so he steps in says the woman pointed to a number at the bottom of the page i don't have enough money to buy christmas presents for my family she explained in broken english i read in the paper that if i join your christmas club program and save five dollars each week then at the end of the year i'll have 400 bucks but they say i only have 260 dollars and now i don't know what to do she buried her hand in her head her head in her hands the manager studied the woman's passbook

you had and this is what i mean. The manager's acting logical, but that's not the right move in this situation. It's not like a pure financial transaction here where most businesses think that way, right? The manager studied the woman's passbook. You had to start the contributions in January in order to make the $400, he said. You started in June. All your interest was credited. I'm sorry, but the number is accurate. Siggy stepped in and moved the manager aside firmly. There's so many stories like this in the book. Madam, how do you do? I'm Mr. Wilzig. I'm the bank president. Siggy took the passbook and pretended to study the numbers carefully before handing it back to her. It was our mistake,

madam. We miscalculated the interest. The real number is $400. You can buy all your presents. Don't be upset. The woman embraced him. And so this is Siggy's point. TCNJ was not the only bank in town. Customers had options. It would not do to penalize someone because she had not understood the rules. Why give her a reason to switch to another bank? He wanted his customers to be happy. and so before i go back to doing more things that don't scale i'm just trying to really spoil your customers and how you keep doing that your word of mouth is going to spread over a long period of time like this guy owned a bank for multiple decades took a long time to grow from 100 i think 180 million to 4 billion if i'm not mistaken but i have to bring this point out because he's also

just like this crazy entertainer and he's like he was very it's interesting he had uh almost like a dual personality in a sense like he was he wanted to be respected and admired by other people but he also didn't care what other people thought and so he would just bust out into singing and like dancing in the middle of like public places and really he's just happy to be alive if you think about like why wouldn't you be yeah when he saw like how precarious life really is so it says he had a beautiful voice and sounded like a professional singer but he'd sing at the oddest times he would sing in restaurants and public places he would dance in aisles he would be oblivious to everyone around him the whole world was his stage often he seemed more like an entertainer than a banker people would ask us us, now this is his children, does your father own the restaurant?

We tell them no, he's just happy to be alive. People thought he was nuts and would laugh at him, but he didn't care. We were proud to have a father who could have that much fun and not care about what people around him thought. And just that idea, just he's just happy to be alive. No, he doesn't own the restaurant. He's just happy to be alive no he doesn't own the restaurant he's just happy to be alive and it's funny because he wants to meeting some of his best friends because they move in next door and siggy had the habit of singing in the shower and one day the guy that just moved in like after several days of hearing this this this relentless singing open the window to the house he's like will you shut up and and then siggy pops out and they wind up becoming friends from that um i'm gonna go to actually you know one more thing before i get to to treat spoiling customers uh so when he hires people he's like listen you don't have to he wants you to he's

like you're not going to walk as fast as me talk as fast as i do or think or work as fast as i do but you have to you have to do all those faster than you think is possible. So he was really into walking fast, talking fast, and working fast. Some of this is like he saved time because he just wouldn't say goodbye. He would just like, you'd be in the room with him. He'd say what he needed done, and like there's no, okay, we're wrapped up. It's like, no, he just left, and he'd do the same thing on the phone. Abrupt departures, whether from a room or from a phone call, were classic Siggy. He had no time for lengthy courtesies and hung up on everybody without saying goodbye.

Very often, people would keep talking into a void, and only after hearing the disconnected dial tone did they realize that he had hung up a long time ago. And so in the book, there's a lot of examples of him having conversations with customers. Like I said, he's just constantly like, this is the president of the bank, and and he's still meeting with people he winds up getting in trouble with the fdic he gets in trouble the fed gets in trouble with all these other people later on um like never like you know i don't think he's ever fined i don't think he goes to jail he doesn't go to jail for sure anything like that but he's just like in a heavily regulated the most regulated business on the planet which he talks about later maybe i shouldn't have entered the most regulated business on the planet and he just doesn't like. Maybe I shouldn't have entered the most regulated business on the planet.

And he just doesn't, like, he doesn't think rules apply to him. And he doesn't like people telling him what to do. But the point is, is like, he does things that you just wouldn't expect from somebody running this giant bank. And so he's constantly recruiting customers on a one by one basis. And so I just want to pull out this exchange that he's having with the customer, because I really think that it illustrates, like, this concept of doing things that don't scale and that if you spoil your customers if you do what's best for the customers it's just going to bring you more customers so it says the customer

was amazed by Ziggy's great rates and couldn't figure out how his bank ever made money Ziggy he asked how can you afford to give me such special treatment Ziggy answered candidly I know that you're going to play golf this weekend at your country club with all your friends. When someone says he doesn't like the rates at his bank or tells you his bank's turned him down for a loan, do you know what you're going to say? You're going to say, you must immediately call my friend Ziggy, the chairman of the board of my bank. He always approves my loans. And do you know what your friend is going to reply? The chairman of the board of your bank personally approves your loans? What's his number?

That's why I give you such special treatment, Siggy said. Because you will be my goodwill ambassador to all your friends. You will be referring at least one new customer to me each month. And that's how I'm going to make up for the losses I take with you. Siggy went through this scenario with major customers three or four times a day, almost every day for years on end. And then his son, who also worked in the bank, wraps this up for us. My father's strategy was spoiling certain customers in order to create a constant stream of customer referrals from them.

And then Ziggy also has a really interesting, I think this is a useful framework. So he has this idea of like differentiating between the employees that you have and realizing they're either a workhorse or a racehorse. And so this is what he means by that. When evaluating the job performance of his employees, he differentiated between workhorses and racehorses. A workhorse was someone who did the minimum, followed the same routine day in and day out, and rarely came up with a great idea. So that's the workhorse. A racehorse was someone with potential, an individual who showed initiative, ambition, and the ability to go beyond the call of duty. Of course you need workhorses in any business, he explained. All businesses need people to do the basics, but there's no point

spending precious time trying to turn a workhorse into a racehorse and so something the book mentions over and over again is that he had one of the the largest egos that you could ever find in a human being um he talks about like oh you can't like he tells his kids later on that you can't marry that person because you're the daughter of a genius or you're the son of a genius and so everybody like he would yell at people and insult people and he'd call everybody his favorite insult was a schmuck. It's like, oh, this person is a schmuck. This person, like that person is a schmuck, everything else.

He was really relentless with the pressure he put on those around him. Like this is a very hard dude, as you can imagine, going everything he had to experience, right? And so he was relentless with the pressure he put around on people, on those around him. His family members, obviously, people he worked with. But he also could be pretty funny. So this is an example that sometimes they're talking about his kind of a little disrespectful to people at times. But he says sometimes his put-downs were amusing. I don't know how so-and-so could have made this ridiculous investment, he said.

If he's such a great businessman, how could he let himself be suckered into buying something so worthless? Goes to show you, even smart chickens shit on their own feathers, he would conclude, quoting an old Yiddish saying. I had never heard of that, and that made me laugh. Even smart chickens shit on their own feathers. That sounds like something that Charlie Munger would say. So that's why I started laughing at him. Those who knew him best understood that the humor did little to erase the nightmares of his past and so this is very interesting because it right after talks about you know undoubtedly poor treatment of people around him it talks about his complicated relationship with with his religion and with god

and the fact that from from there's no getting over what he went through and so it tormented him until the day he died and so he winds up having like a almost like he uses rabbis like a therapist okay so it says rabbi cat served as siggy's therapist and confidant the one person with whom siggy could discuss his nightmares and flashbacks so he would wake up in the middle night screaming he'd have nightmares he'd be drenched in sweat like you know just i mean he just can't even imagine i know i'm repeating myself and that's not very descriptive, but I just have no words for this. So it says,

The rabbi and Sigi would speak for hours about the meaning of life, the role of evil, and whatever business issues were on his mind. Sigi and Rabbi Katz also shared an existential dilemma, namely how to reconcile a benevolent God with the murder of more than a million children in the Holocaust. How come you never go to the synagogue? Siggy's young son once asked. I have a mixed relationship with God, he replied. I go to synagogue on the Jewish holidays and give thanks to the Almighty. Without the will of the Almighty, there's no way a shorty like me would have survived the Holocaust. But I don't go to synagogue every week. I have a hard time being thankful for the murder of a million and a half

jewish children or the murder of my innocent seven-year-old nephew and two-year-old niece so what he's referencing there is that that line when they separated him right when he got to auschwitz he's put in the left line the girl in the green coat and some of his other family members are put in the right. In his right line was his sister, her husband, and their 7-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter. And they were killed that day. They were gassed and killed that day. So there's an entire chapter called Government Schmucks. And this is where he starts fighting. He's going to wind up suing themucks. And this is where he starts fighting. He's going to wind up suing the Federal Reserve.

And this is like the downside. The good side of having a giant ego is the fact that, hey, I don't know. You know, I don't know. I'm not a toolmaker. I can figure out how to be a toolmaker. I'm not a nurse. I figure out how to make a nurse, be a nurse. I'm doing that for literally life and death.

Once I get to America, like I'm learning on the job. I don't know how to, I don't know much about stocks. I can teach myself about stocks. I don't know how to, I don't know much about stocks. I can teach myself about stocks. I don't know how to run an oil company. I can teach myself. That's the good side of having this supreme self-confidence, this ego. I always think of, you know, I look for any excuse to regurgitate this quote from Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari.

I've told you, I don't know, a dozen, probably a dozen times on past podcasts about this because I think he's dead on. And what Nolan realized is not only that, like he was one of the first when nolan was founding technology companies it was very rare for the founder to actually run the technology company right at that time they would they would start the company and then they would bring in older management and so nolan bush was one of the one like he laid the foundation for a lot of these technology uh company founders and ceos to actually maintain control of their company, right? He was doing that in the 80s. And so he noticed something

about his own life, but also Steve Jobs, who was, you know, he worked for Nolan, was like 10 years younger than Nolan. And so he says, perhaps everyone has creative potential, but only the arrogant are self-confident enough to press their creative ideas on others. Steve believed he was always right and was willing to push harder and longer than other people who might have had equally good ideas, but who caved under pressure. So the reason I bring that up is because that's counterintuitive. Most people say, hey, you know, don't be arrogant. Don't, you know, be humble, whatever the case is. And Nolan's saying, no, if you're humble, like you're going to lose.

And so you see that with Siggy. He says right here, Siggy had a deep-rooted hatred of authority. He could not tolerate anyone telling him what to do. The animosity was very deep-seated and very obvious. So that's beneficial when he's building his career. It also gets him into trouble with the Federal Reserve. He wants to sue them with the FDIC, with the SEC, with all these other regulators, because he he did not he would not listen to other people. He thought he knew better. He literally calls the reason the chapter I'm in is called government schmucks is because they would tell him they would give him an order to do things like I'm not doing this. And like he'd have to hire attorneys and he'd have these huge fights. And he was convinced that he knew better. And in some cases, he was right. They

tried to get him to divest his real estate because the real estate on the books in on his bank were like there was a there was a recession and they went the value dropped. And so the regular is like, you have to sell this get off your books. He's like, you idiot. This real estate is five miles from New York City. Real estate is cyclical. I'm not selling. They have this huge fight. Somehow, he avoids having to sell it. And then he winds up coming back and doubling what he made on the real estate.

So he's actually right in that example. So this is, there's a very complicated story in the book. This paragraph is really going to tell you like what what his fight with the Federal Reserve was all about. And don't worry about the name of these acts and these laws, because the book talks about the laws change constantly, they're renamed or updated. But at this point, the Fed is saying, hey, an oil company cannot have ownership of a bank, you have to divest, you have to separate your two holdings, right? And he didn't want to do that. So it says the Fed officer cited the Bank Holding Company Act, the BHC Act, which stipulated that not that a non banking company could not own or operate a commercial bank.

The assumption behind the BHC Act, they said was that an oil man like Ziggy knew nothing about banking and that his risky oil drilling jeopardized bank customers, the bank customers money about Ziggy is the fact that he's highly leveraged, and yet all of his wealth is concentrated in his company. He also has constant stress and health problems. He's a constant workaholic. He's constantly worried about his business. So there's just some this gives you an idea of like how he thought about asset allocation. And then even when he's about to have a quadruple bypass surgery, listen to what he says to his daughter.

His daughter has to come in. There's some complicated way they get around these regulations. His daughter winds up running one of the companies, but she's really like he still has control. He steps aside, but he still controls. So there's a bunch of that in the book as well. As a further consequence of the constant buying of stock, Siggy was forever cash poor. Whatever wages, bonuses or cash dividends he he earned he used to pay down his margin loans or else buy more stock in his two companies he had he was this high and mighty ceo of a bank

collecting a huge salary and huge bonuses every year and no one suspected he was also often desperate for cash that's where some of his migraine headaches came from his fortune was tied up in those stocks he had heart problems and was about to undergo a quintuple bypass operation. On the gurney, he called me close to him, and I was expecting him to say something like, Sherry, I love you. Thanks for staying with me. Instead, he motioned for me to bend down so he could whisper in my ear and said, Sherry, I want you to buy 300 shares of Trust Company stock, but you have to do it today, quick, before four o'clock when the market closes. And so eventually the FDIC, the Fed, the SEC, he does have to make some structural changes to his business and says he fumed over having been forced to make so many changes, but these were the rules of banking and he had no

choice but to comply. I don't think there was ever a time that my father truly enjoyed banking for banking's sake he loved making himself and others happy and rich and banking was almost a necessary evil for doing that sometimes he would say i should have my head examined for picking the most regulated business in the world state State regulations, federal regulations, SEC regulations. What could be more stressful? He hated taking orders from anyone. And so I mentioned earlier, he's just really hard on everybody around him, including his kids. And so then he answers the question. He's like, why are you such a hard ass to your children? And he's just got a great line here. Father, his son asked him, why do you bust my chops mercilessly over every single decision at the

bank? Because I'm not going to be around forever, Siggy replied. And if you can tolerate me over and over, then you'll be able to stand up to anyone after I'm gone. And this is the great line that he ends the advice to his son. This is fantastic. Never give up. And this is his record right before he finds out that he's dying. Siggy had grown his bank from $180 million in assets to more than $4 billion by the year 2000, all without mergers or acquisitions. And so he did not take care of his health.

He worked all the time, wouldn't go to the doctor. And so he's wound up staying at a friend's house. They were going to take a trip the next day. And it says, these are the people that he had met when he was singing. It says, during the night, they heard Siggy throwing up. They ran upstairs and found the bathroom covered with blood, and Siggy sprawled on the floor. They put him in their car and raced him to the hospital,

where x-rays and blood work revealed that he had stage four advanced multiple myeloma, which is an incurable blood cancer that had ravaged Siggy's body. And so he's very close to dying. He's in the hospital. And he has this saying that he said throughout his life that he's like, I'm still in Auschwitz. I'm still in Auschwitz. Like basically saying like you can never outrun these memories. And so he's going to want to let me just read this to you and you'll see. Like unfortunately it winds up being illiteral.

The doctor studied his declining numbers and recommended decadrone, which attack cancer with greater potency than any other steroid. Although the drug could bring on serious side effects, amnesia, confusion, dizziness, nausea, insomnia, and hallucinations. And so Siggy's friend, the one that discovered him throwing up and took him to the hospital as a doctor. So Siggy's doctor friend, Jerry Quint, warned that resorting to decatron carried risks. I get calls from the police, he told them. They find patients on Decatron walking down highways naked. It makes you insane. Siggy had no choice. He was deteriorating and gave doctors permission to begin the aggressive treatment. At times, under the drug's influence, Siggy imagined he was not in a New York City hospital, but in a concentration camp. He found a pencil and drew

maps of the hallways, nursing stations, and laundry chutes. He memorized routes and noted obstacles between his hospital room and the outside world. Remember, it's not a hospital room, Tim. He's in a concentration camp. Then he showed the drawings to Sherry, his daughter, who was always by his side, and whispered that this is how he planned to escape. The memories of Auschwitz were so vivid that he sensed the SS were lurking in closets and peering around the edges of corridors. When doctors wanted to put him inside an MRI scanner, he refused, saying it looked like a crematorium. So he winds up getting released from the hospital.

He's not doing really well. And he winds up being able to survive. He wanted to make it to his son's birthday and so his his son comes to visit ciggy at his uh at his apartment at his condo and he says when he arrived at his father's apartment he found him sitting on the dining room table ciggy pointed with glee at the cake and candles and colored sugar swirls and snow white frosting. Happy birthday, Siggy called out weakly, his thin arms raised in delight. The nurse lit the candles and with whatever strength he could muster, Siggy sang in a slow, trembling voice. Happy birthday, happy birthday to you.

Ivan, my dear, happy birthday to you. Gesturing as best as he could. He ended the song and pointed for his son to blow out the candles, which he did. Siggy was rushed to the hospital the next morning. He died that night. Less than a year after his death, his estate was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Not bad, as Siggy once said, for a short, bow-legged Jew with flat feet who never graduated kindergarten and started with only $240 in his pocket. entertaining and you learn at the same time if you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes your podcast player you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time if you want to buy a gift subscription uh for a friend or a co-worker family member i will leave a link in the show notes to do that as well that is 223 books down 1000 to go and i'll talk to you again soon