June 4, 2009, - 2:08 pm
OUTRAGE: Chrysler Dealer Compares Closing of Dealership to “Kristallnacht”
By Debbie Schlussel
I feel for the Chrysler dealers who were told by Chrysler that they can no longer be in business as Chrysler dealers. It doesn’t make sense, as the dealers cost Chrysler no money. And Chrysler’s claim that there’s “too much competition” and that they don’t have enough inventory, smacks of unfair restraint of trade. Competition is good for the consumer, and less of it means higher prices.
Still, that’s business in America. It happens all the time. Businesses go bankrupt and their bankruptcies cancel all prior agreements and contractual obligations. That’s life. And business is business. Any business knows that, with a bankruptcy filing by another business upon which it depends, that business will die. It’s happened over the years to many other business owners who didn’t diversify and take measures to survive if their symbiotic relationship with another business ends. Chrysler dealers aren’t the first, and they won’t be the last.
Attention, Marvin Tamaroff:
This . . .
. . . Is Not the Same As This:
Photos from Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 1938: Jews Arrested and Sent to Concentration Camps, Synagogues and Jewish Businesses Destroyed . . .
But the biggest outrage in all of this is an absurd letter by Chrysler dealer Marvin Tamaroff, whose suburban Detroit dealership was ordered closed. Tamaroff compares the closing of his dealership under bankruptcy proceedings to “Kristallnacht,” November 9-10, 1938.
It is like “Crystal Night” in Nazi Germany in 1938, but instead of the Nazis seizing “private property” without due process of law and compensation, Chrysler and President Obama are using the
power of a Federal Bankruptcy Judge to trample and run roughshod over the rights of 789 Dodge/Chrysler Dealers.
That’s nauseating. On Kristallnacht (or in English, “Crystal Night”), tens of thousands of Jews were hauled off to death camps, gassed, and never heard from again. The businesses that were vandalized and destroyed by the Nazis–their glass windows broken, their merchandise plundered, and contents set on fire–had this done for the sole reason that the businesses were owned by Jews. Kristallnacht was the official beginning of the Holocaust, during which Six Million Jews were murdered and many others tortured and hobbled for life.
Most of my family–on both sides–was wiped out in the Holocaust, sent to their deaths in the camps or shot on sight. But I doubt a single person will cook in the ovens or be thrown into a mass grave over the closing of several hundred Chrysler dealerships.
A very wealthy dealer losing his dealership–NOT because he is Jewish–is hardly the same thing. Not even close. Moreover, while Tamaroff whines in his letter that he is losing his business, his federal campaign contributions list his occupation as “retired.” Did he lie then? Or is he lying now? Tamaroff also doesn’t note in his letter that he’s a multi-millionaire with many foreign and other domestic brand dealerships all over the greater suburban Detroit area. I shed no tears for him.
And he doesn’t tell you in his letter that he regularly donates free cars for auction to the anti-American, anti-Israel, pan-terrorist Detroit Public Television so it can stay on the air.
Full disclosure: Tamaroff’s sleazy failed former trial lawyer, pro-choice liberal Democrat Marc Shulman, was my opponent when he ran for the Michigan House of Representatives (and pretended to be a conservative Republican) in 1998. But Shulman’s election proved only to highlight the greediness of Tamaroff and other dealerships. They got Shulman to introduce and pimp legislation requiring a fee of $200 plus to all car dealers when a prospective car purchaser fills out applications. The legislation only failed after I and some friends anonymously got a dimwitted Detroit Free Press columnist to write about it and expose Shulman’s relationship with Tamaroff.
When you get greedy like that, what goes around comes around. And karma’s a bitch.
So, I feel no tears for Marvin Tamaroff, this multi-millionaire whiner with no sense of dignity. Anyone who has the chutzpah to compare the predictable results of a voluntary bankruptcy in the 2009 United States of America to the Nazis, in 1938, seizing hundreds of thousands of Jews and sending them to their deaths, deserves to go out of business.
Buh-bye. And good riddance.
It’s beyond sad that Marvin Tamaroff–who in his 80s has lived a full, good life, and at the end of the day, goes home to his great life and gazillions and lives in freedom–cannot distinguish between that and someone who was dragged to the ovens of Auschwitz at age 12 to be completely snuffed out because he or she was a Jew.
Even more sad: that no one in the Jewish Community has the guts to denounce Tamaroff’s ludicrous and perverse comparison. But the Tamaroffs are liberals and big donors to Jewish causes. And the “principled” activists in my community know on which side their matzoh is buttered.
Debbie–
Good post. One correction, though..
The correct rendering of the expression is:
“What goes around comes around,” the implication being that it finally came around and got YOU.
[RR: YOU ARE CORRECT. FIXED. DS]
Red Ryder on June 4, 2009 at 2:53 pm