new release
Nazi Billionaires.
The Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties
Author David de Jong and Rachel Stern in conversation
Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY, United States
This event features a conversation between Rachel Stern and David de Jong, author of the landmark work of investigative journalism, which reveals the true story of how Germany’s wealthiest business dynasties amassed untold money and power by abetting the atrocities of the Third Reich – and how America knowingly allowed these horrors to happen. In 1946, Günther Quandt – patriarch of Germany’s most iconic industrial empire, a dynasty that today controls BMW – was arrested for suspected Nazi collaboration. Quandt claimed that he had been forced to join the party by his archrival, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and the courts acquitted him. But Quandt lied. And his heirs, and those of other Nazi billionaires, have [...]
Death and Immortality:
The Gentle Power of Hans von Trotha’s “Pollak’s Arm”
Hans von Trotha and Ori Z Soltes in conversation
Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY, United States
Ludwig Pollak (Prague 1868-1943 Auschwitz) was an extraordinary connoisseur of antiquities--an Austro-Hungarian Jew whose path into academia was impeded by his religion, but who settled in Rome, where he carved out a unique place for himself as an expert in recognizing, understanding, and organizing great works of art. It was he who shaped and articulated the magnificent collections of JP Morgan. Of perhaps even greater consequence, his astute eye saw a sculpted fragment of an arm in a flea market that, he deduced, was the limb missing from the spectacular Hellenistic-Roman sculptural group known as Laocoon. He gifted that arm fragment to the Vatican so that it might complete the work that occupied an important place within [...]