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