Word: meili
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...here at Whittier Law School, some 200 attorneys, historians, journalists and government officials rise to applaud. An elderly lady grasps his hand, murmuring, "God bless you." A student asks for his autograph. And then, in broken English, the thin young man with oval spectacles begins, "My name is Christoph Meili. My job at the bank--I controlled peoples what come in and out. One night I come to the shredding room. I see two old boxes with books...
...Meili was a 28-year-old night watchman at the Union Bank of Switzerland in Zurich when, in January 1997, he happened upon the ledgers next to the shredding machine. His disclosure that Switzerland's largest bank was destroying Nazi-era records, even as death-camp survivors were trying to reclaim their accounts, turned the taciturn Protestant into an international celebrity--and a local pariah. The Zurich district attorney pressed charges against him--later dropped--for violating bank-secrecy laws. He was fired from his job and inundated with death threats and anti-Semitic hate mail...
...Today Meili lives with his wife Giuseppina and their two children in a cramped apartment in West Orange, N.J., courtesy of a Polish-born developer who escaped the Holocaust. "I am the first Swiss person in history to get political asylum," Meili tells his audience here, drawing laughter. (Congress passed special legislation last August granting the Meilis residency.) Other Jewish benefactors have provided furniture, English classes, driving lessons, two 10-year-old cars, the $31,000-a-year doorman job and synagogue schooling for his children, ages five and three. "The Meilis are among the righteous gentiles," says Toby Goldberger...
CHRISTOPHE MEILI Fired Swiss guard who saved Holocaust victims' bank records gets special U.S. residency...
...Meili, a devout Protestant who believes that God led him to the documents, made off with two large ledger books and pages from a third. He gave them to a Swiss Jewish organization, which then handed them over to the police. Immediately suspended from his job by the private security firm that employed him, Meili is now being investigated for violating bank-secrecy laws. Bank president Robert Studer insists that no Holocaust-related documents were destroyed but admits that the shredding was "clearly a mistake, and we have to take responsibility for it." Studer, whom a Swiss court found...