Of Mercy, Fame--And Hate Mail

By Margot Hornblower/Costa Mesa

And for the righteous gentiles, may your mercies be heaped upon them, O Lord. --Hebrew prayer

The mercies bestowed upon the righteous gentile are mixed blessings. He jets into Southern California from New Jersey on a Friday midnight. By Monday morning he must be back at his doorman post in downtown Manhattan. But meantime, as he steps forward to give a speech here at Whittier Law School, some 200 attorneys, historians, journalists and government officials rise to applaud. An elderly lady grasps his hand, murmuring, "God bless you." A student asks for his autograph. And then, in broken English, the thin young man with oval spectacles begins, "My name is Christoph Meili. My job at the bank--I controlled peoples what come in and out. One night I come to the shredding room. I see two old boxes with books..."

Meili was a 28-year-old night watchman at the Union Bank of Switzerland in Zurich when, in January 1997, he happened upon the ledgers next to the shredding machine. His disclosure that Switzerland's largest bank was destroying Nazi-era records, even as death-camp survivors were trying to reclaim their accounts, turned the taciturn Protestant into an international celebrity--and a local pariah. The Zurich district attorney pressed charges against him--later dropped--for violating bank-secrecy laws. He was fired from his job and inundated with death threats and anti-Semitic hate mail.

Today Meili lives with his wife Giuseppina and their two children in a cramped apartment in West Orange, N.J., courtesy of a Polish-born developer who escaped the Holocaust. "I am the first Swiss person in history to get political asylum," Meili tells his audience here, drawing laughter. (Congress passed special legislation last August granting the Meilis residency.) Other Jewish benefactors have provided furniture, English classes, driving lessons, two 10-year-old cars, the $31,000-a-year doorman job and synagogue schooling for his children, ages five and three. "The Meilis are among the righteous gentiles," says Toby Goldberger, a United Jewish Appeal fund raiser. "We could do no less."

Speaking invitations have flowed in from groups as far away as Palm Beach, Fla., and Vancouver. Meili was even invited to Los Angeles to meet Steven Spielberg after the director learned that the watchman had been inspired to act by seeing Schindler's List. Meili has traveled to Israel to accept a humanitarian award, to Berlin for interviews with German television and to Auschwitz for a weekend as the guest of survivors. His story was even optioned by a would-be Hollywood dealmaker but, far from profiting, Meili discovered he had signed away his movie rights "without getting a cent" up front. As Andrew Decter, a New Jersey insurance broker who has taken the Meilis under his wing, explains, "He got starstruck, and we had to bring him back down to earth."

So, despite the taste of glamour, Meili has come full circle--from security guard to player in a vast historical drama and back to security guard. Pale, baby-faced and unremarkable in his navy-and-gray uniform, he spends most days in a Manhattan office building "just standing," he says. "Sometimes I give directions to the elevator, or I tell people to sign in. It gives me a lot of time to think. That's what I do all day long. I think about the Holocaust. Sometimes I go crazy." Back home in New Jersey, Giuseppina Meili is baffled by the American suburbs. "They have big, big castles," she says, "and a lot of people think only about money."

A few months ago, a letter hand printed in German was sent to Meili, care of Senator Alfonse D'Amato, the New York Republican who sponsored his residency. "Meili, you little s.o.b. supported by Jews," the message read. "We will hunt you down in your new home. Even the American Jew-Mafia will not be able to protect you." Since a Swiss newspaper printed Meili's e-mail address, threats have ensued. And after Edward Fagan, Meili's attorney, filed suit in the U.S. against U.B.S., seeking $60 million in compensatory damages for slander and retaliatory firing and up to $2.5 billion in punitive damages for thwarting justice, Swiss papers ran stories claiming that Meili had been a teenage member "of a shoplifting gang." (Meili, who acknowledges a troubled childhood, says any punitive damages awarded will go to Holocaust victims.)

Such attacks remain mere distractions from the doorman's primary preoccupation: seeing whether the documents he recovered from the shredding room will lead to further restitution to Holocaust victims. Jewish groups estimate that some $7 billion in assets and interest is still held in numbered Swiss accounts. As well-wishers swarm about him after his speech in California, Meili smiles shyly and shakes his head. "We don't know what will be the outcome of the story," he says. For the righteous gentile, there may be mercies. But for a man forced to give up his country, there are, so far, few rewards.