Toronto Jewish Family

/ 2026 / … This Toronto Jewish Family Built the World’s Biggest Property Empire —Then Lost It All.
How did a family of penniless refugees build the largest property empire on Earth — and then lose almost all of it in a single year? The Reichmanns fled Vienna on the day of the Anschluss in 1938, rebuilt their lives in the refugee port of Tangier, and went on to found Olympia & York, the company behind Toronto’s First Canadian Place, New York’s World Financial Center, and London’s Canary Wharf. This video tells the full story: the wartime rescue operation run from Tangier by the family’s matriarch, Renée Reichmann — tens of thousands of food parcels smuggled to imprisoned Jews across occupied Europe through the Spanish Red Cross, and the 1944 Budapest children’s visas, arranged with US diplomat J. Rives Childs, that helped save around 1,200 lives. It follows the move to Toronto in 1956, the accidental leap from selling tile to building skyscrapers, Paul Reichmann’s legendary 1977 bet on a near-bankrupt New York, the rise to become the fourth-richest family in the world, and the Canary Wharf gamble — Margaret Thatcher’s encouragement, the delayed Jubilee Line, the recession — that triggered the May 1992 collapse under roughly $20 billion in debt. And it ends with an extraordinary second act, the partial buy-back of Canary Wharf with George Soros, and the values that outlasted the empire. Topics covered: Reichmann family, Olympia & York, Paul Reichmann, Renée Reichmann, Samuel Reichmann, Albert Reichmann, First Canadian Place, World Financial Center, Canary Wharf, Toronto real estate history, Jewish immigrant history, wartime rescue Tangier, Spanish Red Cross food parcels, J. Rives Childs, Luis Orgaz, War Refugee Board, Uris portfolio, Battery Park City, César Pelli, Isle of Dogs, Jubilee Line extension, Margaret Thatcher, Olympia and York bankruptcy 1992, Gulf Canada, Brookfield, George Soros, Tangier memorial, Orthodox Jewish philanthropy, immigrant success story, rise and fall —
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