The King of Oil: The Secret Lives of Marc Rich

astute, intelligent, and subtly ironic woman of French stock with a natural air of authority about her. Throughout her life she had two heroes: her husband and her son Marc. Friends of Marc remember her as a typical “Jewish mother”—caring, encouraging, and overprotective. Young Marc grew up bilingually, speaking his father’s native German at home as well as his mother’s French. He attended Tachkemoni School in downtown Antwerp, a Jewish school that still exists near Pelikaanstraat, the town’s world-famous diamond center. He loved Selma, his German nanny, with all his heart.
The Escape from the Holocaust
     
    It could have been a decent life, but then it did “all start again.” It was once more time to get out the packed suitcase. By May 8, 1940, there was real cause to fear that the Nazis would bring the whole of Europe to its knees, and so David Reich spent virtually everything he had in order to buy the used black Citroën. It was a prudent move, for Nazi Germany commenced its push westward two days later. On Friday, May 10, 1940, at 5:35 A.M . the Low Countries were attacked by the
Wehrmacht
, and the
Luftwaffe
bombed the port of Antwerp.
    “My father put us all in the car. My mother, my nurse Selma, myself. We started to drive away. I saw the German planes. I heard the bombings,” says Marc Rich. We sit in his office in the Swiss town of Zug and drink coffee. We talk about his childhood, his relationship to his parents, and what has influenced him. The German attack and the hasty get-awayare his first real memories—the fear, the confusion, the uncertainty. The trauma of flight and loss of home were etched into the mind of the five-year-old boy.
    Thousands of Belgians tried to save themselves that day by heading into France. David and Paula Reich, with Marcell and Selma, were also driving south in great haste. The French border was less than a hundred miles from Antwerp. They made the terrible discovery at the border that the officials would not permit Selma, the non-Jewish German nanny, to enter the country. France had been at war with Germany since September 1939, and no amount of discussion could persuade the authorities to change their minds. Selma had to be left behind at the Belgian border and was forced to get by as best she could on her own.
    Their escape to France saved the Reich family from the Holocaust. Almost as soon as the Nazis captured Antwerp eight days later on May 18, 1940, between six thousand and ten thousand Jews were rounded up. 5 The Jews were deprived of their property, their businesses were liquidated, and their institutions were banned. It was all part of Hitler’s plan to systematically exterminate European Jewry in its entirety. Out of the estimated fifty-two thousand to fifty-five thousand Jews still living in Belgium in 1940, twenty-five thousand had been deported by the end of the war to Eastern Europe, where they were murdered in the death camps, primarily in Auschwitz. 6
    Nazi Germany seemed invincible in the spring of 1940, and the German word
Blitzkrieg
was soon understood in every language. The Germans overran Belgium, Luxembourg, and Holland within a matter of days. They attacked France in early June, and the first German soldiers were posing for photographs in front of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on June 14.
Casablanca
     
    Driving the black Citroën, David Reich took his family down to Marseille in unoccupied southern France. He hoped to find a ship in the country’slargest port city that would take them away from Europe, although very few countries were still prepared to take Jewish refugees in the summer of 1940. Australia was accepting refugees, but a passenger ship sailing “down under” was out of the question, as it was beyond the family’s means. However, after weeks of waiting Reich finally found a cargo ship, the
Monviso,
that was traveling to Australia and would take on Jewish refugees for a few francs.
    The
Monviso
left Marseille on a Saturday. That was reason enough for several refugees to forgo the journey that would have saved their lives. “Since the boat was leaving on a Saturday, which is Shabbos, they refused to go and stayed behind,” remembers Marc Rich. Devout Jews were forbidden from using means of transport on the Sabbath. However, David Reich knew that the Sabbath laws may be broken to safe a life, and this was definitely one such case.
    The family slept below deck on improvised hammocks strung between pipes. The passengers