#Exec at Israeli-owned company said holocaust ‘wasn’t as bad as people said’: lawsuit

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Alison Greene, a Jewish former employee of El Ad Group, has filed a lawsuit against her former boss William “Bill” Harvey who allegedly made Holocaust denying comments.

An executive at an Israeli-owned company teased Jewish employees about the Holocaust and said concentration camps weren’t “that big a deal,” a new lawsuit alleges.

El Ad Group Executive Vice President of Construction William “Bill” Harvey allegedly made the sickening comments in front of Alison Greene and another exec on Oct. 9, 2017, first by saying “his friend’s wife is a ‘fake jew,’ because none of her family members died in the Holocaust,” according to a suit Greene filed in Manhattan supreme court Monday.

The 47-year-old Upper West Side woman told Harvey his comments were offensive and reminded him that she is Jewish. But that didn’t stop Harvey from adding that concentration camps were not “that big a deal” and “the Holocaust wasn’t as bad as people said it was,’” the court documents charge.

Harvey continued the offensive line of comments for about a half hour even laughing “at Ms. Greene’s obvious distress,” the court filing allege.

El Ad is a subsidiary of Israeli Tshuva Group companies, according to its Web site. Harvey is not Jewish, according to Greene’s lawyer.

The next day, she reported it to the company lawyer, who told her not to repeat it to anyone else because if Harvey was fired “that would be bad for Ms. Greene’s career prospects at El Ad,” and recommended that Greene confront Harvey again, the court papers allege.

Harvey “refused to apologize” and tried to justify his comments — then started a campaign of retaliation against her by removing her from a project, the court papers say.

And over the next two years he “continued to strip Ms. Greene of responsibilities … and belittle and demean her in front of colleagues and clients,” the court documents claim.

On Jan. 11, 2018, Greene tried to leave a meeting after Harvey told her to be quiet and he cursed, “Where the f—k do you think you’re going? … sit the f—k back down,” the court filing alleges.

Harvey and two other male employees also made a slew of sexist comments joking in September 2018 during the senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh over his alleged sexual assault, “good thing I am not running for anything, I’ve done so much worse,” the suit alleges.

Greene, who was fired in January on the pretext that the company had fallen on financial hard times, is claiming retaliation and suing for unspecified damages.

“No company should tolerate antisemitism and Holocaust denial in New York City in 2020, least of all a company with El Ad’s Israeli roots,” said Greene’s lawyer Zoe Salzman, of firm Emery Celli Brinkerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP.

El Ad did not immediately return a request for comment. Harvey did not immediately respond to a message left for him with the company.