Word: meili
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REWARD FOR A "RIGHTEOUS GENTILE" Christoph Meili, a watchman at the Union Bank of Switzerland in Zurich, tasted fame in January 1997 when he revealed that the bank was shredding Nazi-era documents just as death-camp survivors were trying to reclaim their accounts. Fired from his job and subjected to anonymous death threats, Margot Hornblower reported in our May 25, 1998, issue, he emigrated to New York City, where he started work as a doorman. Now Meili, 30, has accepted an $18,000-a-year scholarship at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. The "1939" Club, a group...
Speaking invitations have flowed in from groups as far away as Palm Beach, Fla., and Vancouver. Meili was even invited to Los Angeles to meet Steven Spielberg after the director learned that the watchman had been inspired to act by seeing Schindler's List. Meili has traveled to Israel to accept a humanitarian award, to Berlin for interviews with German television and to Auschwitz for a weekend as the guest of survivors. His story was even optioned by a would-be Hollywood dealmaker but, far from profiting, Meili discovered he had signed away his movie rights "without getting a cent...
...despite the taste of glamour, Meili has come full circle--from security guard to player in a vast historical drama and back to security guard. Pale, baby-faced and unremarkable in his navy-and-gray uniform, he spends most days in a Manhattan office building "just standing," he says. "Sometimes I give directions to the elevator, or I tell people to sign in. It gives me a lot of time to think. That's what I do all day long. I think about the Holocaust. Sometimes I go crazy." Back home in New Jersey, Giuseppina Meili is baffled...
...months ago, a letter hand printed in German was sent to Meili, care of Senator Alfonse D'Amato, the New York Republican who sponsored his residency. "Meili, you little s.o.b. supported by Jews," the message read. "We will hunt you down in your new home. Even the American Jew-Mafia will not be able to protect you." Since a Swiss newspaper printed Meili's e-mail address, threats have ensued. And after Edward Fagan, Meili's attorney, filed suit in the U.S. against U.B.S., seeking $60 million in compensatory damages for slander and retaliatory firing and up to $2.5 billion...
...primary preoccupation: seeing whether the documents he recovered from the shredding room will lead to further restitution to Holocaust victims. Jewish groups estimate that some $7 billion in assets and interest is still held in numbered Swiss accounts. As well-wishers swarm about him after his speech in California, Meili smiles shyly and shakes his head. "We don't know what will be the outcome of the story," he says. For the righteous gentile, there may be mercies. But for a man forced to give up his country, there are, so far, few rewards...