When Bill Ford announced the appointment of Fields as COO it was obvious that he would be named the CEO in 2014. Mark Fields is descendent from Russian and Romanian Jews. He tells the story that no matter where in the world he was assigned to work during his 25 years with the company, his parents would send matzah for Passover and candles for Hanukkah.
Fields and his family have homes in Dearborn, Mich. and Delray Beach, Florida. He is not known to belong to any synagogue in the Detroit area. According to Crain's Detroit, Alan Mulally, 68, will step down before the end of 2014 and be succeeded by Fields, 53, now chief operating officer.
Henry Ford was a notorious anti-Semite and his dealings with the Nazis during the Holocaust are well documented. But the company’s story has changed drastically. The Ford family’s donation of a rare 500-year-old Torah scroll to a suburban synagogue and the appointment of a Jewish chief operating officer demonstrate a marked shift which began in the late 1940s when Henry Ford II began hiring minorities, but it would take many more decades before Jewish executives were hired as officers. Mervyn Manning became the first Jewish officer of Ford when he became vice president in 1977.
During those years, Ford II already had started a period of repentance through action as the friend of such notable Jewish philanthropists as Max Fisher, making significant charitable gifts to the United Jewish Appeal.
Today in Detroit, Ford Motor Co. and the billionaire family are regularly seen as major contributors to the Jewish federation and the Jewish community center. Members of the Ford family and top executives at the company have been honored by local Jewish groups.
Thanks for this info. Who'd have thought that a virulent hate could transform, in the same family, to honor and respect?
ReplyDelete