Dutchman Builds Exact Replica of Noah's Ark To Show Bible is True.

After experiencing a nightmare that a flood would drown the Netherlands, a Dutchman decided to build a replica of Noah's Ark to show that the Bible is true. He raised over $1million dollars in bank loans to back his project.  Now his ark will be featured on the Thames River at the London,  England, Summer Olympics. Life-size animals are part of the project, including giraffes, to show how they fit into the ark. One piece of information he may know, written in Jewish commentaries on the Torah portion of Noah: the reason G-d had Noah build the ark is because it took him a very long time and the Almighty hoped that people would question Noah and would repent when they heard that a great Flood was coming.

By Michael Inbar

TODAY.com contributor

updated 6/22/2011 10:41:13 AM ET

While Noah will likely always remain the first name in arks, tourists are chomping at the bit to climb aboard “Johan’s Ark,” an ambitious re-creation of the biblical boat that’s attracting gawkers galore along a waterfront shipyard in Dordrecht, a city in the western Netherlands.

Dutch builder Johan Huibers is expected to complete work on the massive vessel sometime next month in what has been a staggeringly ambitious project to bring one of the best-known stories of the Bible to life. It’s taken three years of his life and $1.6 million out of his pocket, but Huibers, owner of a successful construction company in Holland, says the project is a dream come true — literally.

“I dreamed a part of Holland was flooded,” Huibers, 60, told Janet Shamlian in a report that aired on TODAY Wednesday. “Then, the next day I get the idea to build an ark of Noah.”

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Adding in goodness and kindness: CEO disguises himself as an employee and finds new empathy for his workers.

"Just because you're thirsty doesn't mean the person next to you is. He may be hungry." So said the Lubavitcher Rebbe in a public address, teaching how to think about helping someone else. In the story below, the CEO of a company disguised himself as an employee, and in so doing, learned a lot about those working for him. In the end he not only was able to help some individuals, but gave everyone a raise. This is a story about a man who learned the art of giving, and in the process, connected more deeply with himself.

From Unaffiliated To ‘Undercover’

CEO, philanthropist — and Emmy-nominated reality show star —Sheldon Yellen on his Jewish journey.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Jason Miller 

JTA

West Bloomfield, Mich. — Sheldon Yellen, the CEO of BELFOR Property Restoration, never expected to be a reality television star when he signed on for an episode of the CBS program “Undercover Boss.”

Posing as an employee of his company to get a taste of life in the trenches, Yellen earned an Emmy nomination for the episode.

Prior to Sunday’s telecast of the awards ceremony, he said that win or lose he was honored to have been nominated. His episode of “Undercover Boss” was up against some stiff competition for Outstanding Reality Program and lost out to “Deadliest Catch,” which focuses on the rough-and-tumble life of deep-seas crab fisherman.

But for the CEO, posing as “Tom Kelly” was an eye-opening experience. Yellen, who typically has taken his recent fame from the show and Emmy nomination with humility, said he learned a great deal from going undercover and plans to change the way he relates to his employees.

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Coming Clean: BMW Heirs Forced to Face Nazi Past

Exposed in a documentary on German television, the major shareholders of BMW, the Quandt family, finally own up to its share of atrocities during the Holocaust. Their slave labor camps included the most nightmarish conditions: whippings, humiliations, and public executions for having "displeased their masters." After the documentary aired, the family released a statement saying, ""We recognize that in our history as a German business family, the years 1933 to 1945 have not been sufficiently cleared up." 

Billionaire Stefan Quandt, major
shareholder of BMW

BMW's Quandt Family Faces Its Nazi Past

A shocking documentary aired on German TV exposes the family's shameful history of Nazi profiteering and use of slave labor

by Gail Edmondson

Automaker BMW is Germany's most admired employer and a pioneer in profit sharing. So it came as a shock Sept. 30 when an investigative television documentary exposed the Nazi-era misdeeds of BMW's controlling shareholder family, the Quandts. The Silence of the Quandt Family highlighted how patriarch Günther Quandt, grandfather to the generation now controlling BMW (BMWG.DE), built a blood-stained wartime fortune on the back of slave labor and how he sidestepped postwar recrimination.

The reclusive Quandt family responded to the documentary five days later, on Oct. 5, pledging to back a research project into the family's Nazi past and its role under the Third Reich, opening family archives and documents to an independent historian.

TESTIMONY FROM FORMER SLAVE LABORERS

"The accusations that have been raised against our family have moved us," said the family in a statement. "We recognize that in our history as a German business family, the years 1933 to 1945 have not been sufficiently cleared up."

BMW, of which the Quandts became major shareholders 15 years after the war, was not implicated in the documentary. In keeping with its normal policy, the automaker made no comment about the Quandts, but noted that it has publically confronted its own wartime history via independent research projects.

The TV program stunned Germany and triggered a raft of newspaper stories with headlines such as "The Quandts' Bloody Billions" and "A Fortune Stained in Blood." The hour-long documentary included interviews with former slave laborers who testified to the devastating conditions and atrocities which took place at Günther Quandt's battery company, Accumulatorenfabrik AG (Afa). Afa produced highly specialized batteries for the Nazi war machine, used in U-boats and V-2 rockets. It also produced munitions. "We were treated terribly and had to drink water from the toilets. We were also whipped," said Takis Mylopoulos, a forced laborer who worked in Quandt's Hannover plant.

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