Orthodox Banker Files $40M Suit Over BNP Paribas ‘Nazi’ Training Video
A former executive at BNP Paribas North America Inc. filed a federal lawsuit alleging that he was fired by the bank after complaining about a training video that featured Nazi imagery.
Jean-Marc Orlando said in the suit filed Friday in Manhattan U.S. District Court that he was terminated as managing director in the bank’s fixed-income division in New York after complaining about the video portraying the head of a competing bank as Hitler, Reuters reported. Orlando, who was fired in 2012, had worked for the bank for 18 years, including in France.
He is seeking $40 million in monetary and punitive damages, according to Reuters.
Orlando, who is Orthodox Jewish, in the suit said the video was his “worst nightmare,” Reuters reported. He and other managers watched the video at a training meeting in Amsterdam in 2011.
According to the lawsuit, the video created by BNP employees parodied the 2004 film “Downfall,” which depicted the final days of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.
Following his complaints about the video, the bank gave him an “unusually and suspiciously poor performance evaluation,” the suit alleged.
A BNP spokeswoman in New York told Reuters that she had not seen a copy of the complaint and that the bank does not comment on pending litigation.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
- 2
Opinion It looks like Israel totally underestimated Trump
- 3
Fast Forward Student suspended for ‘F— the Jews’ video defends himself on antisemitic podcast
- 4
Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish עמיל קאַלינס ראָמאַן אַנטפּלעקט שפּאַלטן אין דער ישׂראלדיקער קאָלעקטיװער נשמהEmil Kalin’s Yiddish novel exposes divisions in the Israeli collective psyche
דער העלד פֿון „צוזאַמענבראָך“ פֿאַרלאָזט זײַן פֿרוי און קינד און לאָזט זיך גיין אויף אַ קאָמפּליצירטן גײַסטיקן דרך.
-
Fast Forward In Tenafly, NJ, a crowd awaits the release of local son Edan Alexander from Hamas captivity
-
Fast Forward Hamas and Trump say Edan Alexander to be freed from Gaza after US negotiates release
-
Culture Should Diaspora Jews be buried in Israel? A rabbi responds
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.