Unstoppable is the ultimate immigrant story, an epic David-and-Goliath adventure and an inspiring manual for survival in the face of tremendous odds. As people emerge from the devastation wrought by the global COVID-19 pandemic, the true-life story of Siggi Wilzig offers a roadmap for re-invention.
While American teens were socializing in ice cream parlors, Siggi was suffering beatings by Nazi hoodlums for being a Jew and was soon deported along with his family to Auschwitz. Siggi used his wits to stay alive, inventing skills the Nazis could exploit to run the camp. After two death marches, near starvation, he was liberated from Mauthausen and went to work for the US Army hunting Nazis, which earned him a visa to America. He began his career selling neckties from the trunk of his car, and in little more than a decade rose to become CEO of both a publicly traded oil company and a bank with assets in excess of $4 billion.
Siggi’s story is a riveting narrative of grit, cunning, luck, and the determination to live.
Nonfiction
Unstoppable: The Incredible Journey of Siggi B. Wilzig, the Auschwitz Survivor who Overcame All Odds and Became a Wall Street Legend
September 1, 2020
Discussion Questions
Joshua Greene’s Unstoppable: Siggi B. Wilzig’s Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend is a heartwarming story of a Holocaust survivor who became a successful businessman and philanthropist in America. Greene pulls no punches in describing the challenges Wilzig survived in Europe, or those he overcame in America, but he also shows how Wilzig’s relentless drive allowed him to persevere and eventually thrive.
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