I was honored a few weeks ago by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. At the dinner, I met a long-time friend of my father, Leo Melamed, chairman emeritus of the CME Group* (formerly the Chicago Mercantile Exchange). He asked me to come by to reminisce about Dan and to discuss our current work for CME.
When we sat down, I told him that I used my dad’s former office in Chicago when I am in the city. When I work there, I feel like I am surrounded by my dad’s story. His notes on the Nuremberg Trial are on display, along with his dispatches from the front lines, describing Nazi propaganda overnight and a trend analysis of the Nazi story line.
Melamed’s office walls tell their own story – of a man who, like my dad, understood the value of relationship building and hard work, who understands that big ideas often mean taking big risks and that the secret is often just getting a few influential people to believe in you and give you a chance. At 84 years old, Melamed retains the twinkle in his eye and is as influential in Chicago civic and business circles as ever. He tells his story with the conviction and pride of a man who worked hard for every achievement, and who understands the significance of his legacy.
In his book, Escape to the Futures, Melamed wrote, “I was seven year old in fall 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland. We lived in Bialystok, in the middle of the country. Initially the Nazis took the city, then turned it over to the Russians, who had made a deal to divide Poland. My father was a well-known political activist, a socialist who had to flee before he was jailed. He found his way to Lithuania, which Stalin decided to make independent.
My father called us from Wilno in Lithuania. We had to get out quickly as the border between the countries was closing that night. We said goodbye to my grandmothers and aunt and boarded the night train, which turned out to be the last one out of Bialystok. We got to Wilno, a center of Eastern European Jewish life, where my parents became teachers at the Yiddish day school.”
In the summer of 1940 Stalin changed his mind and absorbed Lithuania. The school song for young Leo became “One, two, three, four, Stalin’s children are we.”
“My father went every day to the capital of the country, Kovno, to stand in front of the Japanese consulate to try to get a meeting with the Consul General, Chiune Sugihara,” Melamed said. The diplomat knew that Jews were being rounded up in Poland to go to concentration camps and that the Russians were sending anybody suspicious to Siberia. Sugihara ignored specific instructions from his Foreign Ministry and issued visas to Jews, who were then able to go through Russia to Japan on the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
“We got our transit visa to Japan on August 31, 1940 but only got to travel four-and-a-half months later in the middle of winter. I had a three-day stop in Moscow, where my family took me to see the embalmed body of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin lying life-like and fully uniformed in a mausoleum. Then we got on the train to Vladivostok, a 6,000 mile trip to the largest port in Russia. From there we went to the port of Tsuruga, just north of Kyoto, Japan. My father enrolled me in school…in a matter of 18 months this was my fourth country. I had picked up a bit of Lithuanian and Russian, now Japanese.
In April, 1941, our visa came through. We went from Yokohama to Seattle, finally landing in America. Then we went on a transcontinental train to join my mother’s family in New York City. They paid for our tickets and were our financial guarantors. We were finally free. Two months later, in June, 1941, Hitler recaptured Bialystok on his way to invading Russia. Both my grandmothers, my aunt and all of my other relatives were rounded up and crowded into the Great Temple. The Nazis doused it with gasoline and ignited an inferno. There were no survivors.”
Melamed paid his way through college at the University of Illinois Chicago, then held at Navy Pier, by driving a taxi, and went on to earn his law degree at John Marshall Law School.
He had big ideas that shaped the financial markets as we know them today. Melamed’s invention of currency futures took hold with the support of his academic mentor, Professor Milton Friedman. He became chairman of the largest futures exchange in the world, but never profited from his role on the exchange. He saw this as his civic duty, to lead CME and give back to the financial industry that gave him a chance. He and his wife raised three wonderful children. Among many Japanese-influenced items in Melamed’s office is his grandson’s karate world championship medal, which he won representing the United States in this traditional Japanese sport.
The United States has millions of these stories, of immigrants who made good because they were given a chance to become citizens, who worked hard and gave back. Remember this story when you go to the polls on November 8 to cast your vote for president. The essence of America, exemplified by icons like Leo Melamed, is the triumph of hope and effort over hatred and despair.
Richard Edelman is president and CEO.
*Edelman client