Jewish Gangsters
There are few excuses for the behavior of Jewish gangsters
in the 1920s and 1930s. The best known Jewish gangsters – Meyer
Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Longy Zwillman, Moe Dalitz — were involved
in the numbers rackets, illegal drug dealing, prostitution, gambling
and loan sharking. They were not nice men. During the rise of American
Nazism in the 1930s and when Israel was being founded between 1945 and
1948, however, they proved staunch defenders of the Jewish people.
The roots of Jewish gangsterism lay in the ethnic
neighborhoods of the Lower East Side; Brownsville, Brooklyn; Maxwell Street in
Chicago; and Boyle Heights in Los Angeles. Like other newly arrived groups in
American history, a few Jews who considered themselves blocked from
respectable professions used crime as a means to "make good"
economically. The market for vice flourished during Prohibition and Jews
joined with others to exploit the artificial market created by the legal bans
on alcohol, gambling, paid sex and narcotics.
Few of these men were religiously observant. They rarely
attended services, although they did support congregations financially. They
did not keep kosher or send their children to day schools. However, at crucial
moments they protected other Jews, in America and around the world.
The 1930s were a period of rampant anti-Semitism in
America, particularly in the Midwest. Father Charles Coughlin, the Radio
Priest in Detroit, and William Pelley of Minneapolis, among others, openly
called for Jews to be driven from positions of responsibility, if not from the
country itself. Organized Brown Shirts in New York and Silver Shirts in
Minneapolis outraged and terrorized American Jewry. While the older and more
respectable Jewish organizations pondered a response that would not alienate
non-Jewish supporters, others – including a few rabbis –asked the
gangsters to break up American Nazi rallies.
Historian Robert Rockaway, writing in the journal of the
American Jewish Historical Society, notes that German-American Bund
rallies in the New York City area posed a dilemma for mainstream Jewish
leaders. They wanted the rallies stopped, but had no legal grounds on
which to do so. New York State Judge Nathan Perlman personally contacted Meyer Lansky to ask him
to disrupt the Bund rallies, with the proviso that Lansky’s henchmen
stop short of killing any Bundists. Enthusiastic for the assignment,
if disappointed by the restraints, Lansky accepted all of Perlman’s
terms except one: he would take no money for the work. Lansky later
observed, "I was a Jew and felt for those Jews in Europe who were
suffering. They were my brothers." For months, Lansky’s workmen
effectively broke up one Nazi rally after another. As Rockaway notes,
"Nazi arms, legs and ribs were broken and skulls were cracked,
but no one died."
Lansky recalled
breaking up a Brown Shirt rally in the Yorkville section of Manhattan:
"The stage was decorated with a swastika and a picture of Hitler.
The speakers started ranting. There were only fifteen of us, but we
went into action. We … threw some of them out the windows. . . . Most
of the Nazis panicked and ran out. We chased them and beat them up.
. . . We wanted to show them that Jews would not always sit back
and accept insults."
In Minneapolis, William Dudley Pelley organized a Silver
Shirt Legion to "rescue" America from an imaginary Jewish-Communist
conspiracy. In Pelley’s own words, just as "Mussolini and his Black
Shirts saved Italy and as Hitler and his Brown Shirts saved Germany," he
would save America from Jewish communists. Minneapolis gambling czar David
Berman confronted Pelley’s Silver Shirts on behalf of the Minneapolis Jewish
community.
Berman learned that Silver Shirts were mounting a rally at
a nearby Elks’ Lodge. When the Nazi leader called for all the "Jew
bastards" in the city to be expelled, or worse, Berman and his associates
burst in to the room and started cracking heads. After ten minutes, they had
emptied the hall. His suit covered in blood, Berman took the microphone and
announced, "This is a warning. Anybody who says anything against Jews
gets the same treatment. Only next time it will be worse." After Berman
broke up two more rallies, there were no more public Silver Shirt meetings in
Minneapolis.
Jewish gangsters also helped establish Israel after the
war. One famous example is a meeting between Bugsy Siegel and Reuven Dafne, a
Haganah emissary, in 1945. Dafne was seeking funds and guns to help liberate
Palestine from British rule. A mutual friend arranged for the two men to meet.
"You mean to tell me Jews are fighting?" Siegel asked. "You
mean fighting as in killing?" Dafne answered in the affirmative. Siegel
replied, "I’m with you." For weeks, Dafne received suitcases
filled with $5 and $10 bills -- $50,000 in all -- from Siegel.
No one should paint gangsters as heroes. They committed
acts of great evil. Historian Rockaway has presented a textured version of
Jewish gangster history in a book ironically titled, But They Were Good to
their Mothers. Some have observed that, despite their disreputable
behavior, they could be good to their people, too.
Sources: American
Jewish Historical Society |