JUNE 1 • 2023 | 53
The death of British author
Martin Amis came as a film adap-
tation of one of his Holocaust
novels premiered to rave reviews
at the Cannes Film Festival.
Amis, who died May 19, 2023,
of esophageal cancer at age 73,
was not known primarily for his
Holocaust fiction. But that aspect
may soon loom large, as The Zone
of Interest, an adaptation of his
penultimate novel, has become
an early favorite to win this year’s
Palme d’Or, Cannes’ top prize.
Published in 2014, the book, as
many of his works did, dealt with
the mechanisms of genocide and
with societal collapse. The book
centers around a figure loosely
inspired by Auschwitz death camp
commandant Rudolph Hoess. It
dissects the mentality of Nazi offi-
cers and their families as they try
to compartmentaliz their personal
lives while committing atroci-
ties against Jews. The novel also
show the perspective of a Jewish
sonderkommando — a concentra-
tion camp prisoner who disposed
of the dead bodies of fellow Jews
who had been gassed.
In the movie, directed by
British Jewish filmmaker Jonathan
Glazer, the protagonist is Hoess
himself. Glazer said he hoped the
film adaptation would “talk to
the capacity within each of us for
violence, wherever you’re from.
” It
was important, he said, to depict
Nazis not as “monsters,
” but rather
to show that “the great crime and
tragedy is that human beings did
this to other human beings.
” The
movie, filmed in Auschwitz, is
expected later this year.
S
am Zell, a Chicago real estate magnate
and son of Holocaust survivors who
led a tumultuous leveraged buyout that
bankrupted the Tribune media company in the
early 2000s, died Thursday, May 18, 2023. He
was 81.
Before buying the Tribune Co. in 2007, the
billionaire was known for his gift for reviv-
ing moribund companies. He developed an
office-tower company that he sold to the
Blackstone Group for $39 billion in 2007. His
firm also invested in manufacturing, travel,
retail, healthcare and energy. He pioneered the
use of REITs, real estate securities that trade
like stocks on the major exchanges.
But Zell appeared to lose his magic touch in
2007 after buying the Tribune company and
its assets, which included televisions stations,
the Chicago Cubs baseball team and major
newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and
the Los Angeles Times. The company foundered
in what Zell himself called the “deal from
hell,” and filed for bankruptcy in December
2008, one year after Zell took the company
private in a heavily leveraged $8.2 billion deal.
The deal took place at a time of declining
fortunes in the media industry. Zell’s personal
leadership and decision to saddle the company
with debt were widely blamed for the failure.
“The ‘grave dancer’ of real estate develop-
ment was now the ‘grave digger’ of the news-
paper world,” a Forbes columnist wrote at the
time.
Zell was a major donor to Jewish caus-
es, including the Herzliya Interdisciplinary
Center in Israel, the Israel Center for Social
and Economic Progress, the American
Jewish Committee and the Bernard Zell
Anshe Emet Day School, named for his
father, in Chicago. (Its alumni include former
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and actor Ike
Barinholtz; a Jewish high school in Chicago is
named for Zell’s mother Sophie.)
According to a 2007 profile in the Forward,
Zell would regale campers as a Jewish summer
camp counselor with tales of his parents’ escape
from the Holocaust. According to his 2017
autobiography, Am I Being Too Subtle? Straight
Talk From a Business Rebel, Zell’s parents, then
known as Ruchla and Berek Zielonka, escaped
from Poland at the onset of the Nazi invasion
and embarked with their 2-year-old daughter
on a circuitous, 21-month journey that took
them through Lithuania, Russia and Japan
before they made it to the United States. They
traveled on transit visas supplied by Chiune
Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat in Vilnius who
saved thousands of Jews.
Zell was born on Sept. 28, 1941, in Chicago.
He graduated in 1963 from the University of
Michigan, where he was also a member of
the Jewish Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. He man-
aged student housing apartments as an under-
graduate and founded his chief investment
vehicle, Equity Group Investments, in 1968.
“Sam Zell was a self-made, visionary entre-
preneur. He launched and grew hundreds
of companies during his 60-plus-year career
and created countless jobs,” Equity Group
Investments said in a written statement.
“
Although his investments spanned industries
across the globe, he was most widely recog-
nized for his critical role in creating the mod-
ern real estate investment trust, which today is
a more than $4 trillion industry.”
Zell was married three times. His survivors
include his wife, Helen, three children and nine
grandchildren.
Zell credited his own drive to the lessons he
learned from his parents. In his memoir, he
remembers seeing footage of the concentration
camp atrocities that his parents escaped.
“Those unforgettable images were my
introduction to the Holocaust,” Zell wrote.
“Looking back, I can see that they accelerated
my maturity and gave me a sober awareness
of the world. That film also went a long way
toward helping me understand my parents’
orientation toward life — why they pushed so
hard and were so determined for their children
to succeed. Economic success had been critical
in securing their freedom. They had escaped
Poland in part because they had the means to
do so — my father’s prescience in storing away
money.”
Real Estate
Magnate Sam
Zell Dies at 81
ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL JTA.ORG
PETER ROSS/EQUITY GROUP INVESTMENT
Sam Zell, the chairman of Equity Group
Investments, the private investment firm he
founded more than 50 years ago
ANDREW LAPIN JTA.ORG
English Writer Martin
Amis Died
MAXIMILIAN SCHNHERR VIA
CREATIVE COMMONS/MARCH 17, 2012
The English author Martin Amis