Sigi Ziering; Tycoon Survived Nazi Camps
- Executive Became a Philanthropy and High-Tech Leader
By: MYRNA OLIVER TIMES STAFF WRITER
Obituaries
Los Angeles Times, Home Edition
Tuesday, November 14, 2000
Metro Section: Metro
Page B-6
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It must have been the “training” of the Holocaust, the self-described workaholic speculated to Fortune magazine a couple of years ago. “Unless you work,” he said, “you are destined for the gas chamber.”
And work he did — as a teenager relocated to the ghetto in Riga, Latvia, then to Fuhlsbuttel prison near Hamburg, Germany, and on to a Kiel concentration camp. He survived the Nazis but never stopped working until about a year ago, when he was diagnosed with brain cancer.
Sigi Ziering, who turned a chemist’s bright idea into Diagnostic Products Corp., one of Los Angeles’ most successful international high-tech companies, died Sunday. He was 72.
[…]
Toward the end of the war, the Zierings were moved to the Fuhlsbuttel prison. Every week, they watched Nazis load 10 or so Jews into a truck destined for Bergen-Belsen and the gas chambers. “With German precision,” Ziering told Fortune in 1998, “the guards went at their job alphabetically — and never got to Z.”
Later, the Zierings were marched to a Kiel concentration camp, where males were routinely murdered if they failed a physical test — running a mile carrying a heavy piece of wood. Ziering and his brother passed.
[…]
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For the Record;
Los Angeles Times Saturday, November 18, 2000 Home Edition; Metro; Part B; Page 6; Metro Desk; 1 inches; 22 words;
Type of Material: Correction
Bergen-Belsen — The obituary of Sigi Ziering in Tuesday’s Times incorrectly stated that there were gas chambers at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
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