Glenview_Bank090803 - Focal Point Publications

International Campaign for Real History

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Anti-Defamation League (New York) Press Release:

Updated: August 8, 2003[ADL forces Chicago Bank president to resign over article commending Hitler’s economic policy]

THE president of a suburban Chicago bank resigned this week amid an uproar caused by his comments in a newsletter praising Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler as an economic leader.

Dave Raub told the owners of Glenview State Bank that he would voluntarily step down as president, the bank said in a statement. Mr. Raub will remain at the bank as senior executive vice president of the trust department.

Website note: Abraham Foxman, wealthy and controversial chief of the Anti Defamation League, likes to refer to himself as a “Holocaust survivor.” As a biography on this website shows, he was not even born when Hitler invaded his native Poland, and he was looked after by Polish Catholics throughout the war; his parents also “survived”.

The remarks, which appeared in the July edition of a newsletter Raub wrote for the bank’s trust customers, prompted ADL’s Chicago office to take action. In a letter to the bank’s president, the League said it was deeply troubled by the portrayal of Hitler as a model, particularly when taken out of context of the Holocaust and his brutal regime.

Almost immediately, the president and other principals at the bank contacted ADL to discuss the issue and to seek the League’s ideas on the best way to apologize and remedy the situation.

The bank subsequently issued an apology to the community and removed the article from its Web site. The online version of the article was replaced with the apology and featured a copy of ADL’s letter to the bank.

The League has discussed working with the bank on a project, possibly involving Holocaust education, to turn this incident into a “teachable moment” and repair the damage done in the community.

The Glenview State Bank newsletter, “Outlook,” contained a troubling analysis of the virtues of Hitler’s economic policy in Germany in the 1930’s. The article focused on the role of consumer confidence in economics and discussed over four paragraphs Hitler’s success in raising national confidence in Germany, thereby improving the German economy.