On his first yahrtzeit, 23 Kislev, Albert (Beri) Reichmann’s family remembers the man who moved worlds

Photos: Family archives

BY anybody’s standards, Mr. Reichmann was a wealthy man — at the height of his success, he and his brothers were estimated to possess the fourth-largest family fortune in the world.

Yet his wealth, and even the manner in which it was attained, while always maintaining the strictest adherence to every aspect of halachah, is perhaps the least interesting thing about him. What inspires awe is his attitude toward money. He did not doubt for a moment that his wealth was a gift from Hashem to be used for His purposes.

As such, his financial success left him totally untouched in terms of his self-image. He never viewed himself as anything more or less than another Jew making up the minyan in shul. When a young boy once approached him in shul to show off a fancy new shirt, Mr. Reichmann pointed to his own shirt and said, “I bought it for twelve dollars at Simpsons.”

Someone once complimented him, “Mr. Reichmann, you make everybody feel like a somebody.” He quickly corrected the one offering the praise: “Everyone is a somebody.” Therein lies the secret of how he treated his employees with the same respect and dignity that he showed presidents and prime ministers — no more, no less.

“If you can, you do,” could well have served as the motto of generations of the Reichmann family. “Fortunate and able,” is the way his daughter puts it. If the wealth came from Hashem, it had to be put to the best possible service for the benefit of Klal Yisrael.

Rabbi Eliyahu Essas, one of the first homegrown teachers of Torah in the former Soviet Union, notes, “Not all rich people are like Albert Reichmann, and that is a tragedy for them, not just for the world. They received this gift from G-d, and they did nothing with it.”

A Family Legacy

Reb Yissachar Dov Reichmann, Mr. Albert Reichmann to the world and Beri to the family, was acutely conscious that he was the heir to a family legacy, tracing back through generations. His father, Shmaya Reichmann, demonstrated unusual business acumen from an early age. Still in his thirties, while living in his native Hungary, he was already the largest egg distributor in Europe, having developed innovative solutions to the two major obstacles in the egg business: preservation and distribution. Early on, Shmaya developed a process for preserving eggs from degeneration. That allowed him to buy eggs from farmers in the summer, when they were plentiful, and sell them in the big cities in the winter, when prices were much higher due to scarcity.

Eventually, he moved his family to Vienna, and the Reichmann distribution network expanded to Berlin, Paris, and London. Fortunately for the family, after the Nazis’ rise to power, Shmaya took the precaution of moving most of his assets abroad, which made it easier for the family to flee after the unification of Germany and Austria in the infamous Anschluss.

A notable story in the family lore highlights the incredible kibbud av Reb Shmaya had for his father. The family was all set to celebrate the bar mitzvah of Edward, Beri’s oldest brother, at their home in Vienna when they learned that Reb Shmaya’s father, Reb Dovid Reichmann, had suffered a severe stroke and would be unable to make it. Without hesitation, the family moved the bar mitzvah to Beled, Hungary, where Reb Dovid resided. On the Shabbos following Kristallnacht, the Nazis arrested community leaders in Vienna, intending to take Reb Shmaya as well, but thanks to his kibbud av, he was nowhere to be found.

From Hungary, the family subsequently fled to Paris and from there, via a number of intermediate stops into Spain. At each stage, they remained barely ahead of the rapidly advancing German forces. After a brief time in Spain, the family crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, from Spain into Tangier, Morrocco, where they would remain for more than two decades. (Tangier had long been an international city and remained neutral during the war, though it was occupied by Spain from 1940 until the war’s end.)

Within little more than a year in the city, Shmaya had already established himself as a respected currency trader and private banker, and he prospered in his new profession and environment. He would continue to advise his sons in business until his passing in 1975, and they inherited his fearlessness and love of innovation. The fact that no one had ever done something before or seen the opportunity that they saw meant nothing to them. Beri’s oldest son, Efraim, once offered two conflicting explanations of his grandfather’s, father’s, and uncles’ courage in business: “I think their risk analysis capabilities were either highly advanced or impaired. I don’t understand where they got the strength, the guts, the wisdom to do what they did.”