I
just Googled Robert Rockaway
and found a short and very interesting little article about
why Jewish gangsters fascinate him and how Jewish gangsters
differed from their Italian counterparts. In a nutshell,
Jewish mobsters were a product of their times (1920s and
1930s) and did not continue their legacy after that one
period, while Italian gangsters handed their "profession" to
each succeeding generation.
What follows is a side
of Jewish history you may have
missed.
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, David Berman were
involved in the numbers rackets, illegal drugdealing,
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 Pelle'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 Lodge. When the Nazi
leader called for all the "Jew bastards" in the city to be
expelled, or worse, Berman and his associates burst into 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. But
historian Rockaway has presented a textured version of
Jewish gangster history in a book ironically
titled But He Was Good to His
Mother.
Some have observed
that, despite their disreputable behavior, they could be
good to their people, too. A little interesting bit of
Jewish
history....
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