no offense meant. sometimes corporations outlive their creators.
Posted on 09/11/2008 9:55:30 AM PDT by NCjim
Football fans and Jewish groups are outraged over the prospect of a new Giants and Jets stadium being named for German insurer Allianz because of its Nazi ties in World War II.
The company insured the Auschwitz death camp and had a chief executive serving in Hitler's cabinet. The company is on the short list of those vying to slap their name on the Meadowlands stadium in New Jersey via a lucrative sponsorship deal.
The possibility of what some saw as a former Third Reich enabler getting its name on their ballpark has some Big Blue and Gang Green fans vowing boycott.
"I think it's terrible, but that's the mighty dollar," Giants fan Keith Hayes, 33, said of the name.
"It would be an insult," said Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "It's putting their name in lights for generations to come."
Debate over Allianz is also heating up the Net and is the talk of sports radio.
A season-ticket holder who posted under the name xxvnyg80 in a Giants Internet forum said he wrote team owner John Mara, begging him to sack the idea.
Allianz would reportedly pay $20 million to $30 million per year for the naming rights of the $1.3 billion stadium, which is to open in 2010.
During the Holocaust, the same company refused to pay off life insurance stipends to Jews and sent their policies' proceeds to the Nazis instead, Holocaust historians have written.
Allianz, which employs 11,000 people in the U.S. and sponsors golf and racing events, has acknowledged its shameful past and has shelled out millions in restitution.
"Our record of trying to redress the evils of the Third Reich have been significant over the years," Peter Lefkin, senior vice president at Allianz of America, told the Daily News.
He would not comment on the pending naming deal, and officials for both teams referred questions to the New Meadowlands Stadium Corp., or NMSC.
The "NMSC has undertaken a rigorous due diligence effort," said spokeswoman Alice McGillion. "NMSC management and the teams' owners became sensitive to Allianz's history."
After weeks of vetting the company, ownership is convinced that Allianz has done enough to correct its past, said a source close to the negotiations.
Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum, secretary general of the North American Board of Rabbis, agreed that although survivors' sensibilities are understandable, a naming deal is legit.
"I have found Allianz to be receptive, to be sensitive and a friend of the Jewish people today," he said.
"We need not live in the past."
no offense meant. sometimes corporations outlive their creators.
Enough time and generations have passed. Let them over-pay for the naming rights.
You said; "Time to move on."
QUOTATION: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
ATTRIBUTION: George Santayana (1863?1952), U.S. philosopher, poet.
Life of Reason, 'Reason in Common Sense,' ch. 12 (1905-6).
Well then, maybe Porsche would like to give it a name..................
An inability to place the past in proper context is why we still hear about reparations over one hundred and forty years after emancipation.
Get a grip! Not the same thing. It’s not even in the ballpark.
It’s not about remembering the past, it’s about not obsessing on the past.
How many CEOs and board members has this company has in the last 60+ years? Has it gone public/ private in that time? Been involved in any mergers and acquisitions? Why should we still be punishing the company which probably bears little if any resemblance to the version of itself that insured Auschwitz for the crimes of previous generations?
It’s that kind of perpetual punishment for the past that feeds the reparations movement. Eventually at some point you simply have to say: we’re done feeling bad for that. And 60 odd years seems to be a good time for that.
What a load.
I used to kid Jewish friends about driving German cars like Benz, Audi and BMW.
I smell a shakedown.
As a Jew growing up in the 60’s I remember many of my parent’s generation refusing to buy VW’s or other German products(the didnt realize the Bayer, as in the aspirin company was part of the IG Farben group that made the zyklon B, or we wouldnt have been given aspirin)
I don’t blame them for that atitude because many of the very leaders of Germany industrial collaborators continued to run their companies for years.
But they are all dead now and we can’t assign their guilt to future generations.
So for those NY Giant and Jet fans who are Jewish, maybe it’s time to let it go.
But I also ask you a question: How in the name of Ado’nai(our name for god) can you support Barack Obama?
His heroes are would be modern day Hitlers like Reverend Wright, Farrakhan and others. Do you believe that
this former Muslim would lift a finger to defend our precious Israel from obliteration?
So I say to my fellow NY/NJ Jews, don’t worry about whose name is on the stadium, worry about whose name you choose on the ballot.
in the NY metro area there are plenty of people who were dirctly victimized by Allianz preceding during and for decaades after the war.
The company is scum, they maintained separate sets of books for a few decades to deny Holocaust and other victims of the German war machine a return of their assets held in Allianz’s accounts. There are still sons of Nazis working in Germany’s headquarters in Germany. They are still unrepentant flicken arseholes when dealing with Jewish men in the NY tri state insurance field.
Allianz has only reformed in the sense that the Nazi supporting families that control blocks of shares no longer work for the company but instead receive dividends, they have hired help to run the American division.
I’m kind of deeply ingrained in the “not my fault” world. Primarily my family is German and my roots came over between world wars. So I bear no guilt for American slavery because we weren’t here and I bear no guilt for the Holocaust because we’d already left. But periodically I’ll still run into somebody that thinks I should feel bad about these things.
It made sense for people in the 60s to be boycotting German companies because of the Holocaust. It had only been 20 years, a lot of those boycotters were probably Holocaust survivors or at the very least contemporaries and might have met survivors. But after about 50 years it’s time for people to mellow out.
A lot of people are politically invested in not letting it go.
What people don’t know is that Allianz already owns the naming rights for a stadium in Munich, Germany.
http://www.allianz-arena.de/en/index.php
It seems weird and even hypocritical that people in our country would raise issues without anyone there raising a peep.
If the Germans can let go, why can’t we?
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