January 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This date celebrates the Soviet Army’s 1945 liberation of the Polish concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, the biggest extermination camp built by man.

At this concentration camp, most people arriving at the camp were exterminated the same day. Their bodies were cremated soon afterward in crematoria run by the notorious Schutzstaffel (S.S.) and the Sonderkommando, a group of death camp prisoners who were forced to burn the bodies of the exterminated. The Sonderkommando units were regularly put to death every few months and then replaced by other prisons.

The Holocaust had many horrific acts that occurred inside and outside concentration camps, but Auschwitz became particularly famous and symbolized the devilish cruelty of the Nazi regime. In 2021, author Joshua M. Greene published a book about a remarkable Auschwitz survivor, Siggi Wilzig. The book, “Unstoppable: Siggi B. Wilzig’s Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend,” describes the World War II horrors that Wilzig suffered at Auschwitz and Mauthausen and how he became a Wall Street legend.

The Background of Siggi Wilzig

According to Greene’s book, Wilzig grew up in a small village in West Prussia (now Poland). He was raised in a traditional Jewish family with several brothers and sisters. When the war started, Wilzig was ousted from his school due to new government policies. His family was banished from their village and forced to go to Berlin.

In Berlin, Wilzig attended a Jewish school until it closed, so he never progressed beyond junior high school. Wilzig worked to support his family (except for a few siblings who emigrated to America before the war) and helped them to survive until 1943, when they were deported to Auschwitz. Most of his family was killed the same day of their arrival, but Wilzig lied about his age, saying he was 18 instead of 16.

Wilzig spent the rest of the war in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Mauthausen, escaping death dozens of times. Wilzig met his father one more time while working in the camp hospital, where inmates were sent to die from sickness and starvation.

Unfortunately, the day Wilzig met his father, he was on his death bed. Wilzig was responsible for passing out edible food supplied by the Germans to the patients.

But this task was a trick; the food was poisoned. Another inmate tried to stop him, realizing that if the Germans supplied edible food instead of the usual rotting food, something was wrong.

Wilzig came to work the next day and found that his father and other hospital patients were dead, presumably from the food he had provided. But this event was just one of many traumas he suffered. Wilzig saw countless people die around him at the camp and was on the brink of death himself many times.

Wilzig’s Growth from Immigrant to Wall Street Executive

When Wilzig was freed after the U.S. Army’s liberation of Mauthausen in Austria, he was 19 years old and weighed less than 100 pounds.

For a while, he worked for the U.S. Army tracking Nazi war criminals. For his help, Wilzig was awarded a visa and he came to the U.S. to live with his sister.

Wilzig came with $240 and worked in any job that he could find. While working as a traveling salesman, he married Naomi Sisselman, a woman from a prominent Jewish family.

Her family was wary of this man who came from the war without an advanced education or wealth. But they married anyway, and Wilzig soon became the manager of a company thanks to his savviness and tireless work ethic.

Also, Wilzig would read The Wall Street Journal every day and pay attention to companies he believed could do better in the market. One company that he noticed was the Wilshire Oil Company of Texas.

Wilzig did not have the capital to take over the company, so he saved all the money he could and convinced any person he knew to buy shares in the company. At one point, Wilzig met a wealthy oil executive who brought him on board, allowing Wilzig to get a seat on Wilshire’s Board of Directors.

Wilzig soon took over the company due to his business acumen. At age 39, he was elected president and chief executive in 1965. At the time, it was rare for a Jewish man to become the leader of a publicly traded oil company; in the oil industry, there was only one other Jew in an executive position.

Wilzig made Wilshire grow and increased its revenue, but his business success did not end there. Later, Wilzig led Wilshire in acquiring a controlling interest in the Trust Company of New Jersey (TCNJ). TCNJ was a medium-sized bank in New Jersey that focused on consumer banking and small business services. Wilzig bought it for the tax benefits and made the bank one of the biggest in the tri-state area.

In 1969, he was named the bank’s president and chairman. Wilzig ran both Wilshire and TCNJ until cancer forced him to step down in 2002. Under his leadership, the bank’s assets grew from $181 million to more than $4 billion.

What Made Siggi Wilzig So Successful?

Wilzig’s business success was not only the result of his street-smart and strong personality, but also his hard work. One of the possible reasons for Wilzig’s strong work ethic may have been the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after his experiences in two lethal concentration camps. Eventually, he developed ways to deal with the trauma and flashbacks.

After the war, Wilzig found God again. He cared deeply for the Jewish community and helped Jewish institutions. Wilzig was also instrumental in creating Holocaust awareness projects and was a founding member of the council that created the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

Siggi Wilzig saw Holocaust education as his one mission in life, and he did his best to speak about his experiences.  He was proud to have been the first Holocaust survivor to come to West Point in 1975 and speak to future officers about his war experiences.

Siggi Wilzig is an example of the triumph of the human spirit and showed how a person can rebuild his life after seeing the worst of humanity in Auschwitz and Mauthausen during WWII. He left behind a memorable legacy after his death in 2003, and this book describing his life’s journey is worthwhile reading during International Holocaust Memorial Day.