In a broader financial
sphere, very visibly at the top of the socio-economic pyramid, Jewish
businessman Joseph Seligman's nefarious activities in the late 1800s helped to
create the infamous "Black Friday" stock market crash. Benjamin Ginsberg notes that the
crash
"ruined thousands of
investors, implicated President Grant, and led to a
Congressional
investigation of [Jay] Gould and Seligman ... Similarly, in
the early 1890s, Jacob
Schiff collaborated with E. H. Harriman in the
latter's attempts to
wrest control of the Northern Pacific Railroad from J.
P. Morgan and James
Hill ... When the price of the Northern Pacific
Stock collapsed, the
entire market crashed in the notorious 'Black
Thursday' panic that
led to a nationwide economic depression."
[GINZBURG, p.
73]
In 1885 the
French-based project to build the Panama Canal collapsed, resulting in financial
scandal that led, in part, to Seligman again. "Both the United States Congress
and the French Parliament had inquiries," says Ginsberg, "In both countries
major Jewish financiers were implicated: Baron Jacques de Reinach in Paris and
Joseph Seligman in the United States. Many shareholders lost everything, but
Seligman lost nothing. In contemporary parlance, the Seligmans engaged in
influence peddling, insider trading, and corporate asset stripping and looting
-- all at the expense of credulous investors." [GINZBURG, p. 74] The French end
of the Panama Canal scandals, notes Albert Lindemann, "involved large amounts of
French capital and threatened national prestige -- and Jewish agents were deeply
involved. The intermediaries between the Panama company and parliament were
almost exclusively Jews with German names and backgrounds, some of whom tried to
blackmail one another." [LINDEMANN, p. 87]
The Jewish component
of (Gentile) Huey Long's corrupt political machine in early 20th century
Louisiana included Leon Weiss, an architect, who "was implicated in the
financial scandals surrounding the administration and served prison time."
[KIRKUS, 10-1-97] Herbert Stempel was willing participant in the 1950s
television quiz show scandals until a Gentile, Charles Van Doren, usurped him in
deceit. Jewish TV producer Lew Cowan, denying guilt, was one of the most
prominent executives who lost his job in the wake of the scandals. Even at the
heart of the World Zionist Organization, after founder Theodore Herzl's death,
his wife Julie ("an extravagant and unstable woman") "threatened the Zionist
leaders with scandals and lawsuits if they didn't meet her extravagant financial
needs." [STERNBERGER, I., 8-15, 1995]
At the other end
of the socio-economic world, "the scant attention [popular author Irving Howe]
paid to Jewish crime in World of Our Fathers, his magisterial study of
the [Manhattan Jewish] Lower East side," notes Charles Silberman, "is a good
example of the amnesia American Jews show about this part of their history."
[SILBERMAN, p. 128] In researching the level of Jewish crime during the early
decades of this century in the Lower East Side, Albert Fried notes that "I
discovered that an enormously complex, richly endowed culture of vice and
criminality, made up mainly of young people, thrived on the Lower East Side,
that most outsiders regarded it as Tammany's bastion of power [Tammany Hall, the
corrupt New York city government of the era] that the Jews themselves eventually
came to look upon it as an insufferable burden of shame and embarrassment."
[FRIED, p. xiv] Such embarrassment included Jewish "fagins" (bands of
pickpockets), thieves, pimps, prostitutes, opium dealers, gamblers,
brothel-owners, racketeers, murderers, robbers, and others of virtually any
persuasion. Arson for building insurance and horse-poisoning in extortion
rackets were "two offenses associated almost exclusively with Jews." [JOSELIT,
p. 36] "In the area of only one square mile [in the Jewish Lower East Side],"
notes Jenna Weissman Joselit, "authorities estimated there were approximately
two hundred disorderly [prostitution] houses, three hundred and thirty-six gang
'hang-outs,' and over two hundred pool halls-cum-betting establishments; dance
halls, a rendezvous of pimps and procurers, were found every two and one-half
blocks." [JOSELIT, p. 24]
Abe "the
General" Greenthal, "was one of America's premier pickpockets ... Abe's home and
base of operation was in New York City, but his gang traveled all over the
United States picking pockets." Michael Kurtz (born in 1850) "was one of
America's most celebrated burglars." Joseph 'Yoski Nigger' Toblinsky "led a gang
that specialized in stealing and poisoning horses." Benjamin (Dopey) Fein "was the first
gangster to make labor racketeering a full-time and profitable business. He
institutionalized the practice of furnishing gangs of hoodlums to unions in
their wars against employers." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 88, 91, 94,
95]
"In 1908," notes the
Jerusalem Post, "Jews were 25 percent of the four million residents in
New York City but 50% of the prison population." [HENRY, M., 10-4-01] That same
year, the police commissioner of New York City, Theodore A. Bingham, publicly
noted that half of all the criminals in his city were Jewish. "Jewish leaders,"
notes Robert Rockaway, "worried that Jewish gangsters provided ammunition for
Jew-haters. Consequently, they steadfastly refused to acknowledge the problem in
public." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 51] As stories of Jewish crime in New York City
became increasingly publicized in the mainstream mass media, initially the
"Yiddish press challenged the veracity of the evidence," [GOREN, p. 141] but
"beginning in 1909 and reaching a climax in 1912," says Arthur Goren, "widely
publicized disclosures of vice and crime among Jews created dismay and then
alarm in Jewish circles. Protests of innocence were now impossible." [GOREN, p.
135]
The murder of a
well-known Jewish gambler, Herman Rosenthal, was particularly horrifying for the
Jewish community in that it opened up a Pandora's Box of trials and testimonies
profoundly unflattering to local Jewry. Goren notes
that
"The
appalling fact was that the underworld segment which the trials
and
the indefatigable press had so thoroughly laid bare consisted
almost
entirely of Jewish gangsters and gamblers. No longer could Jewish
apologists find comfort in viewing the phenomena as a rare
deviation
from
the norm. In the accounts, the criminals appeared as
commonplace East Side figures. Sons of hard-working parents, most
had
been exposed as children to religious training and had led average
family lives. Even considering the hired gangsters apart, one could
point
to
exceptional and touching instances of family loyalty, pride in one's
ethnic group, and knowledge of an affection for Jewish religious
tradition." [GOREN, p. 154]
"Jewish criminals,"
wrote Moses Rischin, "regularly made newspaper headlines. The appearance of an
ungovernable youth after the turn of the century was undeniable and excited
apprehension." [FRIED, p. xvi] In April 1911, for instance, 400 Jewish
shopkeepers flooded a criminal court building to complain and testify before a
grand jury about robberies and gangs in their neighborhoods. [FRIED, p. 26] In
1909 alone, 3,000 Jewish "youngsters" appeared before an area juvenile court.
[FRIED, p. 41] Gangster Monk Eastman alone "bossed a Jewish street gang that
could field as many as 1,200 men on short notice." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 97]
While many criminals were rooted in poverty, some prominent Jewish gangsters --
like Arnold Rothstein and Big Jack Zelig -- came from comfortable backgrounds.
[FRIED, p. 40] The king of Jewish crime in the era, Arthur Rothstein, "was a
rich man's son." [COHEN, R., p. 46] Monk Eastman's father "was solidly middle
class, a restaurant owner." [COHEN, R., p. 45] Israeli scholar Robert Rockaway
discounts the usual apologetics for Jewish gangsters,
saying:
"More likely, these
men selected careers in crime because they wanted
money, power,
recognition and status; and they wanted it fast.
Crime
offered them a quick
way to realize their dreams." [ROCKAWAY, R.,
1993, p.
52]
"It was the
Jews, by and large," says Norman Cantor, "not the Italians, who created what was
later called the Mafia. In the 1920s the Italians began to replace the Jews in
the New York organized crime industry, but as late as 1940 if you wanted a
spectacular hit you were looking for a representative of the Lepke Buchalter
Gang, also known as Murder Inc. Jews were also prominent in the gambling trade
and developed Las Vegas in the 1940s. It was a Jewish gambler who fixed the 1919
baseball World Series -- what became known as the Black Sox scandal." [CANTOR,
p. 389] The perpetrator of the scandal was Arnold Rothstein, notes Charles
Silberman, "the inventor of organized crime." [SILBERMAN, p.
128]
"It was with some
astonishment," notes Jewish critic Marvin Kitman,
"that I discovered what an integral part of American Jewish life crime
was.
Our forefathers made names for themselves, such as they are,
as
gangsters, murderers, musclemen, hit men, acid throwers,
arm
breakers, bombers and
all the other professions open to nice Jewish
boys. Prostitution, vice, alcohol, gambling, racketeering,
extortion,
and
all the other things that fill the newspaper today and that I
gladly
have
been attributing as character flaws in other groups of
founding
fathers: Those were our things ... I was shocked at how deep
our
roots are in all the sinks of depravity and corruption ... The Jews
were
the first ones to realize the link between organized crime
and
organized politics. They led the way in corrupting the police and
city
hall. They first realized the value of gang/syndicate cartels in
business
to
reduce the killing of each other. They were monopolists of the
highest order ... We wrote the book, so to speak, on crime, but it's all
forgotten." [KITMAN, p. 9]
"Some
disgruntled Jewish immigrants," says Jonathan Sarna, "chose crime as their
vehicle of upward mobility. Through robbery and fencing operations, they created
a parasitic counter-industry that lived off the garment trade, skimming its
profits for personal benefit. Others made their living by exploiting Jewish
religious practices (the standard history of the kosher-meat industry in New
York is aptly entitled Fraud, Corruption, and Holiness)." [SARNA,
Jewish, p. 53]
Kosher meat is
food that is prepared according to traditional Orthodox religious standards; it
presumably entails extra time and energy to prepare which escalates prices to be
higher than non-kosher food. An investigation in New York City sponsored by a
Jewish community organization in 1915 discovered that 60% of the meat sold as
kosher was fraudulent: most rabbis who supervised kosher sanctions were under
slaughterhouse employ and abandoned strict religious adherence. [GOREN, p. 79]
Among 6,000 New York area butchers who allegedly only sold kosher meat to fellow
Jews, there were "few who did not, at some point, deal in unkosher
meat."[GASTWIRT, p. 113] The Jewish slaughterhouse system was also involved in
price-fixing, extortion, racketeering, fist fights in the synagogue, and even
murder. "The intense rivalry and competition in the kosher poultry business,"
notes Harold Gastwirt, "made it prey to racketeering and violence." [GASTWIRT,
p. 46]
Jewish gangsters
were also violently active in support of Jewish unions or employers, depending
upon who paid them. "Some of the so-called Jewish unions," remarked a veteran of
Jewish labor activities, "... fell early in their careers upon evil days:
underworld characters, gangsters, got a foothold in the organization ...
Unfortunately, the element engaged to help would refuse to clear out when their
services were no longer wanted." [GOREN, p. 304] Rita Simon notes another of the
political dimensions of underworld [and New York City governmental]
corruption:
"In exchange for
police protection of his gang, [gang leader] Monk
[Easton]
employed 'repeaters' (repeat voters) at the polls in favor
of
Tammany Hall,
the local Democratic machine." [SIMON, p. 139]
Jewish
crime was widespread in a number of the largest urban areas of America, some of
it eventually "syndicated" throughout the country, at times even in cooperation
with the Italian mafia. In Chicago the Westside Jewish underworld ward was known
as the "Bloody Twentieth." A 1906 description of the area claimed that
"murderers, robbers, and thieves of the worst kind are born, reared, and grow to
maturity in numbers that far exceed the record of any similar district on the
face of the globe." [FRIED, p. 90]
(Even Al Capone's accountant, who later rose to further notoriety, was
Jewish, Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik.) [LACEY, p. 18] In Cleveland, the Jewish
community had its "noisome and brutal Woodland section"; in Detroit it was the
eastside, most prominently ruled by the Purple Gang; in Boston it was the
Chelsea quarter; Newark had its "fierce third ward"; and in Philadelphia Jewish
crime, featuring boss Harry Stromberg, was largely located in the southeast
area. These cities, with New York, says Albert Fried, "held the worst, that is
the most criminalized, of the Jewish neighborhoods in America." [FRIED, p.
90] In London, England, notes
Daniel Levy, "the Jews were involved in assorted criminal activities. They
committed petty thievery, forgery, and illegal distilling of booze. Some sailed
to eastern Europe and convinced young girls that jobs and bachelors awaited them
in England, only to ship them off to Indian or Argentinean white slave markets."
[LEVY, D, p. 20] Earlier forms of blackmail by non-Jewish British gangs
were "developed by Jewish gangs (formed after the great immigration of the
1880s) into extortion from legitimate shopkeepers. Much as Jewish gangsters
liked to portray themselves as honourable knights defending their
co-religionists against anti-Semitic thugs, they were just as likely to live as
predators upon their fellow Jews. A gang of extortionists known as the
'Bessarabians' were headed by a professional boxer who called himself Max Moses
in private life and 'Kid McCoy' in the ring." [FIDO, M., 2000, p.
17]
Poland? In the early
twentieth century, future Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion was jailed in
Warsaw, Poland, for suspected radical political activism. "That was the first
time," he said later,
"that I ever came into
contact with the dregs of society. I was shaken
to the core at the
language and behavior. I never had the slightest
notion
that such people ever
existed ... The thing that shook me most was that
these criminals were
Jews." [Daniel Kurzon suggests that these included
members of a rival
Jewish political group which Ben-Gurion considered
"more dangerous
criminals" than the "brothel keepers." [KURZMAN, D.,
1983, p. 67]
Prominent Jews in
Chicago's criminal underworld included Louis 'Diamond Louie' Cowan, Hymie 'the
Loud Mouth' Levine, Sam 'Sammy the Greener' Jacobson, Maxie Eisen, Murray 'the
Camel' Humphreys, and (non-Jewish) Al Capone's money man, Jake Guzik. [ROCKAWAY,
R., 1993, p. 43] In 1924, "Chicago
Jewish leader" S. M. Melamed warned about the "great number of Jews in the
underworld." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 49]
"Bootlegging in
Boston," notes Robert Rockaway,
"was controlled by
Charles 'King' Solomon ... He headed one of the
largest liquor, vice,
and narcotics smuggling syndicates in New
England ... In the
1920s, Solomon ran the Boston underworld."
[ROCKAWAY, R., 1993,
p. 34]
But even smaller
cities, like Minneapolis and adjacent St. Paul, had serious problems with Jewish
crime. In November 1927 the Minneapolis Saturday Press ran an article
that enflamed local public opinion, quoting the remarks of a non-Jewish
gangster:
"90% of the
crimes committed against society in this city are committed
by Jew gangsters
.... It is Jew, Jew, Jew, as long as one cares to comb
over the
records. I am launching no attack against the Jewish people as
a
RACE. I am
merely calling attention to a FACT." [FRIED, p.
113]
Originally from Sioux
Falls, Iowa, prominent Jewish gangsters in Minneapolis included "Kid" Cann
(Isador Blumenfeld), Yiddie Bloom, and the Berman brothers (Davie and Chickie).
[LACEY, p. 66] Cann is believed to have been responsible for the murder of
Walter Ligget, publisher of Midwest America, for a series of articles the
paper printed about the Minneapolis criminal underworld. Ligget was gunned down
in front of his family while Christmas shopping. "Much of [Minneapolis'] illicit
business," notes Robert Rockaway,
"was managed by
Isadore 'Kid Cann' ... Blumenfeld and his
all-Jewish
syndicate .... In
1942, the FBI identified Kid Cann as 'the
overlord
of the Minneapolis,
Minnesota underworld." [ROCKAWAY, R.,
1993, p.
48]
Cleveland mob leaders
included Moe Dalitz, Morris Kleinman, Sam Tucker, and Lou Rothkopf. After
prohibition, "the Cleveland mob joined with Lansky and his confederates .... and
formed the core of the most sophisticated national crime syndicate in America."
[BLOCK, A., p. 165] Shondor Birns (Szandor Birnstein) was another prominent
Cleveland mobster, lasting in the criminal underworld for decades til 1975, when
he was assassinated by a car bomb. In early years, he was part of the Maxie
Diamond (also Jewish) gang. Among Birns' crime partners was Mervin Gold who "was
accused of defrauding banks and the Small Business Administration by using
stolen Canadian bonds as collateral for loans. He fled to Israel," but
eventually returned. Birns, noted by the Cleveland Plain Dealer for his
reputation as a "charming killer," was suspected of Gold's eventual murder.
[MCGUANGLE, F., 7-11-99, p. 5H]
Reading, Pennsylvania?
As non-Jewish mobster Patsy Lepera recounted in his
autobiography:
"Reading at that time,
in the thirties and forties, was run by the Minkers
--
Abe and his brother
Izzy. They had a nephew named Alex Fudeman
who fronted for them
.... Even though my father was connected right
to Sicily, he had to
do what the Jews wanted done in Reading, because
that was their town.
They eliminated the Italians. At one time it was
a two-mob town ... One
thing I learn as I go through life is if you come
up against a Jew or an
Italian, you check him out. You don't do nothing
against him -- you
check him out careful. Jews don't belong to the [Italian]
mob, but they're
connected strong. An awful lot of Jews are
connected
strong." [LEPERA, P.,
1974, p. 7-8]
Missouri? Charlie Birger
(born Sachna Itzik Berger), prominent bootlegger, was hung in 1928 for the
murder of the mayor of West City, Missouri. He is believed to have been
"responsible directly or indirectly for the murders of at least a dozen people,
many of whom had been his loyal followers." One of the killed who was not a
follower was a local Ku Klux Klan leader. [DE NEAL, G., 1998, p.
xviii]
To what lengths Jewish
fraud and crime could go might be measured in the chutzpah of Bernie Barton
(originally Blaustein) who even set up a fake church with a junkie as preacher
as a "front for fencing stolen goods." [DEUTSCH, G., p.
7]
A number of
modern respectable Jewish fortunes were founded on links to the underworld in
the Prohibition era. Most noteworthy, the Seagram's alcohol fortune (the
Canadian Bronfman family) grew to power by getting their alcohol into criminal
hands who smuggled it into the United States. Bronfman, who bristled when anyone
called him a bootlegger, had a distribution deal for his booze with Jewish
mobster Meyer Lansky. [BIRMINGHAM, p. 159] Detroit's largely Jewish Purple Gang
was also extremely active in running illegal booze from Windsor across the river
border. The Purple Gang's activities also included "gambling, prostitution,
extortion, loan sharking, and rackets of every kind." [FRIED, p. 102] So much
smuggling was going on between Canada and the United States across Lake Erie
that it was known as "the Jewish Lake." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 37] During prohibition too, "[Federal]
officials labeled sacramental wine [for religious purposes] one of the chief
sources of illegal liquor in the nation," notes Jenna Weissman Joselit,
"Furthermore, calling the record level of usage a 'national scandal,' they saw
the problem as largely a Jewish one." [JOSELIT]
Here's what Israeli scholar Robert Rockaway says
about Detroit's Purple Gang, and Jewish gangs
generally:
"During Prohibition (1920-1933),
Jewish gangsters became major operatives
in
the American underworld and played prominent roles in the creation of
organized crime in the United States. At the
time, Jewish gangs dominated illicit
activiites in a number of America's largest cities, including Cleveland,
Detroit, Minneapolis, Newark, New York, and
Philadelphia. The gang dealt in bootlegging,
gambling, extortion, drugs, and murder, and
developed a reputation for being
more ruthless
than Al Capone's mob in Chicago. The Purple's decade-long
reign
of terror ended when most of the gang's
members either went to prison or were
murdered by rivals ... During the
Prohibition era (1919-1933) 50 percent of the
country's leading bootleggers were Jews, and Jewish criminals financed
and
directed much of the nation's narcotics
traffic ... While Jews predominated in
their
quarter [in Purple Gang-era Detroit], other immigrants and ethnic
groups
lived there as well. One former
resident of the old neighorhood joked that it was
of the old neighborhood joked that i was easy
to distinguish the Jewish dwelling
from those
occupied by non-Jews. 'The non-Jews grew flowers in front of
their
houses,' he said. 'The Jews grew dirt.'"
[ROCKAWAY, R., 2001, p. 113-]
Elsewhere,
"bootlegging in Prohibition-era Philadelphia was directed by Max 'Boo Boo' Huff
.... Huff's successor as Philadelphia's dominant Jewish mobster was Harry
Stromberg, alias Nig Rosen ... He also led what was called the '69th Street Gang' that dealt in prostitution,
extortion and labor racketeering. His influence extended as far as Washington,
Baltimore, and Atlantic City ... When Stromberg left Philadelphia, he was
superceded by his driver and bodyguard, Willie Weisberg, a long-time member of
the city's Jewish underworld." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 32,
34]
Another modern
Jewish fortune similarly constructed is that of the Annenbergs, which was
founded upon Moses Annenberg's horse racing news monopoly that he arranged with
the criminal underworld. "That Annenberg and the Prohibition and gambling mobs
had interests in common is indisputable," says Albert Fried, "An information
monopoly, nominally independent, gave the mobs the wherewithal to police the
complex, sprawling kingdom of the Book [i.e., gambling and bookies]; it was an
instrument of their sovereignty. In return Annenberg was allowed to reap
inordinate profits and become one of the richest men in the land, the founder of
one of its singular dynasties." [FRIED, p. 118]
Another of the most
prominent Jewish American family fortunes, the "fabulously rich Pritzker family
from Chicago," had links, however indirectly, to organized crime even in more
recent history. They were involved, as "clients of the [Bruce] Kanter firm," who
ran a variety of shady Caribbean companies. Kanter, who "had direct ties to
organized crime," [BLOCK, A., p. 162] served on the Hyatt hotel company's Board
of Directors (Hyatt is one of many companies owned by the Pritzkers). [BLOCK,
A., p. 191] Also, notes Allen Block,
"A little digging into
their background produced troubling questions.
It was
discovered that the source of some Pritzker money comes
from
the
racket-ridden Teamsters Pension Fund ... Investigators probing
the
Pritzker empire
were intrigued by its connection to the Pension
Fund.
This was
especially so when it discovered that both [mob-linked] Jimmy
Hoffa and Allen
Dorfman personally worked on Pritzker loans."
[BLOCK, A., p.
192]
In 1997, major
publishers afforded two legendary Jewish conmen of international (dis)repute
respective biographies. Adam Worth started out re-joining and re-deserting
various Civil War regiments (both Union and Confederate) for enlistment bonuses
and later expanded his exploits into forgery, larceny, robbery, burglary, and
other criminal mainstays. In England, Sir Robert Anderson, head of Criminal
Investigations at Scotland Yard, observed in 1907 that "Adam Worth was the
Napoleon of crime. None other could hold a candle to him." The Pinkerton
security agency noted that "in the death of Adam Worth there probably departed
the most inventive and daring criminal in modern times ... Among all the men
Pinkertons have known in a life time, this man was the most remarkable criminal
of them all." [MCINTYRE, p. 287] Novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used Worth as
his model for Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes' arch-nemesis. An important
associate in Worth's earlier years was "Mother" Mandelbaum, described in her era
as "the great crime promoter of modern times," the "most successful fence in the
history of Newy York" and the woman who "first put crime in America on a
syndicated basis." Starting in 1862, over the next two decades she was reputed
to have "handled between $5,000,000 and $10,000,000 worth of stolen property."
[MCINTYRE, B., 1997, p. 29, 30]
A few
years later another real-life rogue (and Jewish) notable, Morris Cohen (the
subject of the second biography), rose from a life as a western Canadian circus
barker and pickpocket to an adventurous life as an arms dealer, bodyguard, and
general to Chinese leader Sun Yat-Sen. [LEVY, D.] Later he served under Chiang
Kai-Shek. He also functioned as a liaison for Zionist influences to Chinese
leadership. [UROFSKY, M., 1978, p. 99]
A similar Jewish con-man was Elias Abraham Rosenberg, a "rascal"
who
arrived in Hawaii in 1887. There,
he
"ingratiated himself with King David
Kalakaua by his chanting and so-called
occult
powers. He soon became the King's soothsayer and astrologer,
acquiring
such power over the monarch that the
Hawaiian press bitterly denounced him
as a
'Holy Moses.' Rosenberg taught the King some Hebrew and was
persuaded
to appoint him appraiser of customs.
He was given quarters in the Iolani
Palace,
where he practiced magic, read the
stars, and chanted Bible stories in
Hebrew."
[KOPPMAN/POSTAL, 1978, p.
229-230]
In 1998, Jewish fraudster
Trebitsch Lincoln was also afforded a biography. Lincoln, noted a reviewer, was
"the king of dupers" and "a thwarted megalomaniac who was also a champion con
man." Born in Hungary in 1879, he immigrated to England and converted to
Christianity. He became a member of Parliament, and later tried to become a
British, and then a German, spy. He turned up as a supporter of the right-wing
Kapp Putsch in Berlin in 1920, became an abbot of a Buddhist temple in Shanghai,
fleeced his devotees, welcomed invading Japanese, became a Nazi
apologist/propagandist and on and on in the life of a human chameleon. [BERRY,
N., 5-8-98, p. 28]
In 1999, the
(London) Daily Mail highlighted the Kray twins, Ronnie and Reggie, "of
Jewish and Romany stock." Both were imprisoned in the 1960s. Only Reggie
survives, "the best-known gangster in Britain ... By 1963, through their
networks of thugs and thieves, Ronnie and Reggie were lording it over London's
underworld and became figures in London society."
Decades after the
likes of Worth and Cohen, famous Jewish underworld figures like Bugsy Siegel and
Meyer Lansky made the American scene. Siegel was instrumental in creating the
legalized crime-laden playground of Las Vegas, starting things off at the Flamingo Hotel. Joseph Sacher headed
the nearby Sands Hotel; Sacher "was
second only to Lansky in the [crime] Syndicate. Years ... [later] he fled the
U.S. and went into exile in Israel." [KELLEY, K., p. 219] Allen Friedman notes another early
Jewish criminal influence in Sin City:
"The real potential of Las Vegas was not understood until Moe Sedway
arrival in 1941." [FRIEDMAN, A., p. 82]
Meyer Lansky
eventually "retired" from a successful life of crime with some $150-300 million
after corrupt escapades that included Florida's "Gold Coast," the Bahamas, and a
gambling resort in pre-Castro Cuba. "At the height of his notoriety," says
Robert Lacey, "Meyer Lansky was reckoned to be, and was targeted by the U.S.
Justice Department as, the biggest gangster in the United States -- a dangerous
lawbreaker of extraordinary power. He was identified as the Mafia's banker, the
boss of the National Crime Syndicate, the head of the Combination -- the
Chairman of the Board." [LACEY, R., p. 10-11]
Las Vegas has
long been a hotbed of underworld influence and a worldwide attraction for
gambling and prostitution. The Italian Mafia has also, from the conception of
Las Vegas as a leisure Mecca, held great sway in the city, but its most famous
underworld personages have always been Jewish mobsters Bugsy Siegel and Meyer
Lansky. The great scope of Jewish
contribution to the creation, and dubious ethics, of Las Vegas may be measured
by the words of professor Allen Balboni. Here he discusses the development of
the desert city as a gambling resort area:
"Most of the [Las
Vegas] hotel builders were Jewish Americans.
Jay Sarno and Nate
Jacobson were associated with Caesar's
Palace
[Sarno later created Circus Circus]; Moe Dalitz, Morris
Kleinman,
and Sam Tucker with
the Desert Inn (and, along with Jake Factor,
with the Stardust after [Italian-American Tony]
Cornero's death);
Sidney Wyman, Al
Gottesman, and Jake Gottleib with the early years
of the Dunes; Gus Greenbaum, Moe Sedway, and
Charlie Resnick
with managing the Flamingo after Bugsy Siegel's death;
Ben Goffstein,
Willie Alderman, and
David Berman with the booking and running of the
Riviera; Milton Prell with the
establishment of the Sahara and then
with
the transformation of
the Tally-Ho into the Aladdin; Hyman
Abrams, Carl
Cohen, and Jack
Entratter with the ownership and operation of the
Sands; and Ben Jaffe, Phil Kastel, and
Jell Houssels (of Anglo-Saxon
background) with the
construction and operation of the Tropicana ... A
few Italian-Amerians
hold minor ownership shares in casinos."
[BALBONI, p.
27]
Jewish singer
Eddie Fisher recalls a Las Vegas offer he had at the peak of his career that he
now regrets turning down:
"When I was
working at the Desert Inn I met with a man named
Billy
Weinberger, who told me, 'We're building
a new hotel and we want to
give you fifty
percent of it.' In return I would perform there
permanently
and would use my influence to
attract other major stars. That
sounded
interesting. 'What's it going to be
called?' I asked. 'Caesar's Palace.'"
[FISHER,
E., 1999, p. 292]
Bernie Rothkopf
also owned the MGM Hotel. Allen
Glick was, between 1974-79, "the mob's front man at the Stardust, Fremont, Hacienda, and Marina hotels." [MORRISON, J.A., p. 1A]
"In July, 1979 Allen Glick was stripped of his Nevada gambling license and fined
over $500,000 for a variety of improprieties." Glick sold his interests in
casinos to Allan Sachs, who was, with a partner, "figureheads for the Chicago
mob responsible for providing skim monies" from Las Vegas gambling operations.
[MOLDEA, 1989, p. 336] Jerome Mack, past president of the Dunes and Riviera, was a former national chairman
of the Israel Bonds Campaign. Jewish entrepreneur Hank Greenspon owned the
Las Vegas Sun newspaper and a local TV station. [See his efforts for
Israel in the mass media section]
In more recently
years, Arthur Goldberg is the CEO of Park Place Entertainment, a
conglomeration of 29 hotel-casinos [JENKINS, P., 5-30-99] worldwide (Caesar's Palace, Bally's, etc.) that is twice the size
of its nearest competitor. Its Stardust
division is the world's largest hotel company. Elsewhere, Sheldon Adelson,
chairman of the Sands, is also the
owner of Venetian, a new Las Vegas
complex built in 1999 at a cost of $1.6 billion. Adelson is "one of richest men
in America," in 1998 worth about $600 million. [STOLL, I., 1-7-00, p. 1]
Adelson, noted the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "is one of the country's
largest donors to Jewish groups and he has influence in the national Jewish
community." [RALSTON] Adelson,
notes the (Jewish) Forward, "has paid for 75 congressmen to visit Israel
with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [the pro-Israel lobbying
organization]." [STOLL, I., p. 1] As Joe Gelman noted in 1999, "A number of
these sin-palace operators are Jewish and strong supporters of Israel." [GELMAN,
p. 15B] [Author Gelman complains about the use of this citation
here].
The chairman of the Mirage, Steve Wynn, is also Jewish.
(The funds for Wynn's first casino, the Golden Nugget, was in large part raised
by convicted Jewish financier Michael Milken). [JOHNSTON, D., p. 74] The Las
Vegas mayor, Oscar Goodman, elected in 1999, is the former president of Temple
Beth Sholom. He also has a reputation as a "mob lawyer," defending, among
others, Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky and Frank Rosenthal. Rosenthal, notes the
Las Vegas Review-Journal, "is credited by some with founding the modern
day Las Vegas sports book but was repeatedly denied a gambling license because
of association with organized crime members." [ZAPLER, p.
1A]
All of this, in more
recent years, has its mirror image in Atlantic City and, increasingly, other
American gambling Meccas. Kenny Shapiro, for instance, was "the Atlantic
investment banker for [Italian American mafioso] Nicky Scarfo, the vicious
killer who ruled the Philadelphia Mafia, the most murderous mob family in
America." [JOHNSTON, D., 1992, p. 82]
Another influential
Jewish gambling mogul today is Sol Kerzner, founder and principal owner of Sun City (also known as "Sin City"), a
resort playground created in 1979 in a poverty-stricken area of apartheid South
Africa. Kerzner's modern empire has expanded with extravagant casinos in
Atlantic City, New Jersey, the Bahamas, Mauritus, France, and a Native American
site in Connecticut. An alleged bribery scheme involving the Jewish mayor of
Capetown, David Bloomberg, in 1986 held up -- for a while -- his United States
investments.
"Sun City," notes
reporter Jay Clarke, "started out as a 'Sin City,' a place where South Africans
could let their hair down because it was located then in the so-called
'independent homeland' of Bophuthatswana. Gambling, show-girl revenues, and
prostitution were the lures." [CLARKE, p. TR1] "If ever there was an appropriate
setting for corruption it is Sun City," noted the (London) Guardian,
"situated as it is in one of nine homelands which represent the cornerstones of
that most corrupt of social systems, apartheid." [BERESFORD, p. 18] One of the Israelis who made millions
off the immoral socio-political system surrounding Sun City is Shabtai Kalmanovitch; he
worked as an "economic advisor" to Bophuthatswana' s dictator. [BERESFORD, p.
18] )
In recent years
Sun City has attempted to diversify by creating a family-oriented "Lost City"
adventure park adjoining the casino. "The patent reason why the Lost City has
been designed as a family playground and entertainment centre," says the
(London) Guardian,
"is
that it entices the public into gaming. The corridors leading to
the
main
casino even feature children's versions of slot machines -- game
machines -- which could with some
justification be described as
nursery slopes inculcating the joys (or otherwise) of adult addiction
to
the one-armed bandits packing the main 'treasure hall.'"
[BERESFORD, p. 18]
Many Jewish (and
other) mob figures were also involved in the gambling industry in Cuba until the
communist revolution destroyed their operations. "After the loss of Cuba and the
clampdown on the Mafia by the Kennedy Justice Department," notes Dan Moldea,
"Meyer Lansky and the organized crime syndicate had targeted the Bahamas as its
new off-shore gambling and narcotics empire." [MOLDEA, 1989, p.
128]
In the casino/resort/hotel
world of the Bahamas, and its criminal underworld, Jews have also been
prominent. Among those who find a place in Alan Block's book about organized
crime on these islands are
* Louis Arthur Chesler
who "served as [mobster] Lansky's point man
....
Among
Chesler's criminal specialties was the handling of stolen
securities." [p. 34-35]
* Morris Mac
Schwabel, a Manhattan attorney, formerly convicted
of
securities
fraud. [p. 36]
* Joseph Jacob
Frankel, who in the early 1960s "teamed up with
Charles
'Ruby'
Stein and [Italian mafioso] Nicholas 'Jiggs' Farlano who
were
major
organized crime figures." [p. 89]
* Arthur Millgram,
president of Automated Ticket
Systems (it had
contracts
with the New York lottery system), who was murdered in
1977. [p.
91]
* Joel Mallin, a
lawyer who had "ties to the mob." [p. 91]
* Irving Kahn,
partner with "mob attorney Morris Shenker." [p.
95]
* C. Gerald
Goldsmith, who "was the Board Chairman of the
[Nassau]
Port
Authority, DEVCO, and several related firms. This put him
in
the middle
of one of the largest political payoff scams in the
Bahamas.
... One of
his duties was the illegal siphoning of company funds
into
the hidden
bank accounts for political payoffs." [p. 95, 98]
* Ben Novack, owner
of Miami's Fountainbleau hotel, who was an
"associate
of prominent gangsters Lansky, Coppola, and others
including
Max Eder, a loanshark and suspected labor
racketeer
with a
history of gambling, robbery, narcotics, and
homicide
arrests."
[p. 115]
* "Cleveland
racketeers Morris Kleinman and Moe Dalitz." [p.
116]
* Burt Kanter,
a lawyer who had "direct ties to organized crime. [p.
162]
He was a
senior member of the law firm Kanter, (Milton) Levenfeld,
(Charles)
Lippitz and (Roger) Baskes.
* Allen
Dorfman, who was "murdered in 1985 to prevent him
from
talking about mob investments ... [He] was in the same league
as
Glick, Shenker, and Malnik." [p. 164]
Even among many
of the most vicious Jewish thugs, worldwide collectivist Jewish loyalty usually
finds expression. "During Israel's war of independence," says Gerald Krefetz,
"[Meyer Lansky] killed an arms exporter who was selling to Arab countries.
Lansky has contributed substantial funds from his gambling fortunes to Jewish
causes, particularly to the United Jewish Appeal." [KREFETZ, p. 116] "A Jew
should lead a normal life and a proud life," Lansky once remarked, "... I've
been ready at any time in my life to defend myself against insults to Jews or to
me as a Jew." [SARNA, Jewish, p. 55] In Russia, in warring leading to the
Communist revolution, "real life gangster [Jewish] Misha Yaponchik ... helped to
defend Odessa's Jews from the Whites [loyal to the Tsar] but was afterwards
killed by the [Communist] Reds." [SICHER, p. 172] In
England, Jewish criminal Jacob Comacho (aka Jack Spot) started "to establish the
reputation for violence that would cause his rise. He called himself the "King
of Aldgate." "When Oswald Mosley's Fascists started to infest the East End [of
London] chanting, 'We gotta get rid of the Yids,' Spot became a local hero,
taking a lead-weighted chair leg to inflict a savage beating on one of Mosely's
roughnecks at the battle of Cable Street. Spot's exultant recollection of the
incident from his placid law-abiding retirement in the '80s was still capable of
startling a young journalist by the revelation of relished brutality ... He
liked to think of himself as the strong man who could be sent for by any Jewish
businessman in trouble anywhere, from Glasgow to London. He would then bash the
businessmen's enemies, and in return help himself to clothing, food and drink,
and spare cash as he needed it. Rabbis recommended him to their congregations,
as Spot tells it." [FIDO, M., 2000, p. 32-33]
"During Prohibition,"
notes Israeli scholar Robert Rockaway, "fifty per cent of the leading
bootleggers were Jewish, and Jewish criminals financed and directed much of the
nation's narcotics traffic ... At the same time, a number of these mobsters,
quietly and without publicity, defended and assisted the Jewish community.
Despite their aversion to 'these black sheep of Israel,' many ordinary Jews
appreciated the gangster's protection, whereas communal leaders accepted and
sometimes solicited their aid.'" [ROCKAWAY, p. 215] Jewish mobster Mickey Cohen,
for instance, was particularly active in raising money for the Jewish terrorist
group IRGUN in its attacks against the British (and Arabs) in Palestine.
[BIRMINGHAM, p. 281] "Just how aware, in 1947," says Stephen Birmingham,
"American Jews were aware of the role of organized crime in the fight for an
independent Israel is unclear. Probably most were not aware. Those who were,
numbed by reports of the Holocaust that were at last appearing in the American
media, preferred to look the other way or to take the attitude that the end
justifies the means." [BIRMINGHAM, p. 284]
The Jewish
criminal underworld was also helpful to Israel in getting weapons to Israel in
its early years. Yehuda Arazi, an arms purchaser for the Haganah organization,
even made contacts with the Jewish-based Murder, Inc. gang, looking for help.
"In my busines," said Arazis, "We can't be too fussy who we do business with.
Sometimes they're not nice people."
[ROCKAWAY, p. 230] Other underworld contacts arranged for Israeli agents
to conceal arms smuggling out of New York City. Jewish criminals even had links
to the President of Panama who allowed illegal Israeli arms shipments to sail
under the Panama flag. [ROCKAWAY, p. 231] In 1947 gangster Mickey Cohen helped
fund-raising efforts for the terrorist Irgun gang fighting the British in
Palestine. Jewish criminals pooled
about $120,000 for the Irgun cause." [ROCKAWAY, p. 232-233] Jewish gangsters like Allie
Tennebaum, says Rich Cohen, "did live to see the emergence of a strong Israel,
and they must have seen it as something to rejoice over, proof that not
everything the gangsters believed in was wrong." [KAUFMAN, G., p.
2]
Susan Berman, daughter
of gangster David Berman, wrote that her father was, as Jonathan Sarna
sardonically notes, "a Jewish role model."
He was "extremely proud of being Jewish," notes Ms. Berman, " ... He felt
that for a Jewish child to be properly brought up, there must be a synagogue, a
rabbi, and a cantor in evidence." [SARNA, JEWISH, p. 55] Another Jewish author, Rich Cohen,
romanticizes gangster murder as some kind of affirmative act of redemption,
delighting in Jewish violence so strongly that he can
write:
"When
[Abe] Reles took a mark [murdered someone], he was not
just
ending a
life: he was expressing the essential freedom of the Jew in
America."
[KAUFMAN, p. 2]
"America,"
wrote another Jewish author, Albert Fried, about Jewish gangsters,” is embracing
Bugsy Siegel's vision; his martyrdom [he was murdered by other mobsters] was not
in vain." [SARNA, JEWISH, p. 55]
"Bombast of this sort," complains Jonathan Sarna in a review of Fried's
volume, "is obviously meant, in part, to pander to a potential Jewish audience,
trying to fashion for it folk heroes of the same 'gentleman-bandit' type as
non-Jews enjoy. Jewish criminals are thus portrayed as being proud of their
heritage, big givers to charity, and strong supporters of the state of Israel."
[SARNA, JEWISH, p. 55]
Is this an
artificial portrayal that Jewish gangsters were integral to, and respected by,
many in Jewish neighborhoods, and loyal to the burgeoning state of Israel? After
the assassination of gangster Big Jack Zelig in 1912, during his New York City
funeral procession "the streets of all around Broome Street were jammed," said
Jewish detective Abe Schoenfeld, "A choir consisting of twelve singers conducted
by Cantor Goldberg of Newark, New Jersey, sang their Jewish hymns as the
procession proceeded down Delaney Street to the bridge. There was an unbroken
line of people covering the sidewalk watching the funeral. Only the funeral of
Rabbi Joseph (a revered spiritual leader) surpassed this --the funeral of Jack
Zelig." [ROCKAWAY, p. 217]
In Chicago, the
death of criminal Samuel "Nails" Morton attracted "five thousand Jewish
mourners, including rabbis [who] accompanied Morton's hearse to the cemetery.
Local reporters wanted to know why so many Jews would attend the funeral of a
notorious gangster." [ROCKAWAY, p. 218] The reason, argues Robert Rockaway, is
an old one: Jewish unity against non-Jewish enemies.
Between both the
Jewish criminal underworld and respectable Jewry, there were especially strong
feelings of solidarity against anti-Jewish right-wing political movements. In
the 1930s, for example, prominent gangster Meyer Lansky was solicited by a New
York City judge and former Congressman, Nathan Perlman, and New York's most
famous rabbi, Stephen Wise, to arrange violent attacks against pro-German groups
in America. [ROCKAWAY, p. 220, COHEN, R., p. 190] ] As late as 1992 the
Synagogue of the Suburban Torah in Livingston, New Jersey, sponsored a tribute
occasion in honor of a Jewish gangster, Max "Puddy" Hinkes, who had decades
earlier organized violent Jewish mobster attacks upon pro-Nazi sympathizers in
the area. [ROCKAWAY, p. 223] In Minneapolis, "gambling czar" David Berman led
Jewish underworld assaults upon pro-Nazi conferences in the 1930s [ROCKAWAY, p.
224]; likewise, Mickey Cohen instigated similar violence in Los Angeles.
[ROCKAWAY, p. 227] For some Jews, Cohen's claim that he single-handedly beat up
two Nazi-types locked in a jail cell with him is welcome legend. [COHEN, R.,
1999, p. 191] Even Jack Ruby, assassin of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald,
"with several
friends, frequently attempted to disrupt rallies of
the
German-American
Bund. One acquaintance reported that Ruby
was responsible
for 'cracking a few heads' of Bund members.
Apparently he
joined in this activity for ethnic rather than political
reasons. The
young men in the group were not organized
adherents
of any
particular political creed, but were pool hall and tavern
companions from
Ruby's Jewish neighborhood who gathered on
the spur of the
moment to present opposition when they learned that
pro-Nazi and
anti-Semitic Bund movement was planning a meeting."
[WARREN
COMMISSION, 1964, p. 696]
"From Arthur Rothstein
and Meyer Lansky to their modern day successors in the Americas, Israel or the
Soviet Union," says Joel Kotkin, "Jewish criminals have succeeded in everything
from murder for hire to smuggling. Yet, even in crime, both emphasis and
cultural preference lay with the successful use of sechel (smarts) rather than brute
force." [KOTKIN]
It is curious
that Kotkin concedes a Jewish criminal tradition but accepts another mythology
about modern Jewry - that Jews were/are smart, but never violent. One of the
many Jewish mobsters recruited to help Israel was Bugsy Siegel. "Siegel," says
Robert Rockaway, "remained enthusiastic about violence. Even after he became a
major crime boss, he wanted to do the killing himself rather than simply arrange
matters. This may explain his willingness to help Israel once he learned that
Jews were willing to kill to achieve their state." [ROCKAWAY, p. 231] Other
exceptionally prominent Jewish murderers in America's criminal underworld
included Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, head of Murder, Inc., and "one of the most
vicious gangsters in the annals of American crime ... Between sixty and eighty
men died on Lepke's orders. They were burned in gasoline, buried in quicklime,
shot, stabbed with ice picks, or garroted." [ROCKAWAY, 1993, p. 17] Lewis
"Pretty" Amberg "was one of New York's best known killers, having 'rubbed out'
from eighteen to a hundred men, no one knew for sure." [ROCKAWAY, 1993, p. 22]
Charley Workman "was said to have killed twenty men ... he was so expert at
assassination." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 193] Harry "Pittsburg Phil" Strauss was
"perhaps the most famous professional killer in American gangster history ...
[He] killed over 100 (some say over 400) men from the late 1920s to 1940s,
making him the most prolific killer in New York." [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p.
149]
"Detroit
police," adds Robert Rockaway, "credit the [the all-Jewish Detroit] Purple Gang
with over 500 killings, more than the Capone mob. This caused Herbert Ausbury, a
historian of American crime, to call the gang 'the most efficiently organized
gang of killers in the United States.'" [ROCKAWAY, R., 2001, p.
113-]
Rich Cohen, who wrote
a book about Jewish crime, noted his own family's reaction to what he discovered
in his research:
"They really had
no idea just how bad [Jewish criminals] were. I
didn't
really
know how violent they were, or how many people they
killed
or how
many times they were arrested. You come to see them
as
people.
Even within that world, some of them were worse than others.
With some,
it was just the situation. And some of them were just
killers."
[KERNICKY, p. 1E]
Cohen also noted that
some of New York's Jewish gangsters gathered at his grandmother's
restaurant:
"When I told [my grandmother] of my interest in writing about
the
restaurant and also
about the gangsters and their table in back, her
face clouded over,
'They'll kill you,' she said, 'These men, they're
not like you. They'll
kill a boy like you.'
When I pointed out that these men --Reles, Strauss,
Goldstein,
Maione, Abbandando --
were long dead, she shook her head and
said, 'They'll kill
you.'" [COHEN, R., 1999, p. 35]
Yet, adds Cohen, "When
[Abe] Reles and the boys were hanging out at my grandparents' diner and the cops
came by, my great-grandmother would hide their guns in the onions. She hated
gangsters, but she hated people she thought hated Jews more." The endemic
anti-Semites Cohen refers to here are generic policemen. [COHEN, R., p.
156]
Jewish author
Gloria Deutsch also notes today's Jewish blinders to their inglorious
turn-of-the-century American past:
"We were
always conditioned to believe Jews didn't do these things, but
here
is Sandy Sadowsky [author of My Life in the Jewish Mafia]
with
her
hair-raising stories of gangland murders, prostitution,
rackets,
strong-arm men -- the shtarkers who exacted revenge and
protected
their bosses -- and one wonders if believing in the myth of
Jewish
crimelessness (other than a spot of fraud here and there) wasn't
anything more than a huge collective ostrich act." [DEUTSCH, p.
7]
Jewish violent
criminality today also goes against
the popular myths of an absolute non-violence in the Jewish community. "The
concept of Jewish convicts serving serious jail time," noted the Los Angeles
Times in 1995, "runs counter to a popular stereotype that Jewish felons tend
to be nonviolent types who serve their sentences in minimum security cells ...
Jews outside of prison often find this [fact of Jewish murderers] hard to deal
with." "The people who know about it are kind of amazed," Howard Cohn, a
part-time rabbi at the Pennsylvania State Corrections Institute told the
Times. "They can't believe there are really Jews in a prison like this."
[BEALE, p. A5]
In the most
sensational genre, New York serial killer David Berkowitz ("Son of Sam") was
Jewish (he was adopted by a Jewish family as an infant), as was Joel Rifkind
[EFTMIADES, p. 75] of Long Island, who into the early 1990s strangled to death
at least 17 women, mostly New York prostitutes. "He went, picked up a
prostitute, had sex with her, killed her, and dumped her." [EFTIMIADES, p.
90-91] In the 1920s, one of America's most sensational crimes, splashed all over
the country's newspapers, was that of the Leopold and Loeb boys: "A pair of
wealthy young members of Chicago's Jewish bourgeoisie in the early 20s, they
kidnapped a young man, Bobby Franks, and murdered him as a kind of Nietzchean
experiment; after their arrest, it was revealed that they had a sexual
relationship too." [BARBOUR, D., 1998] At the time, it was popularized as "the
crime of the century." [ABRAHAMSEN, D., 1983, p. 41] Amy Fisher, who received a
great deal of press in New York tabloids as the "Long Island Lolita," was jailed
in 1992 for shooting the wife of her lover. [PORTER, B., 5-11-99, p.
A6]
Even in an
Orthodox religious community, in 1990, the Jewish Week ran an article
about today's New York Satmar Chasidic community, "notorious for its violent
actions against other Jewish groups [which] has imploded into a war against
itself. Pitting supporters of the deceased Satmar Rabbi against supporters of
his successor ... In the Brooklyn area of Williamsburg, home to more than 30,000
Satmars, four cars belonging to one faction were set on fire last week, while as
many as 500 Satmars watched and cheered. Three Satmars, in one of the burning
cars, needed to be rescued by police, who were also trying to control the Satmar
onlookers." [MARK, J, Satmar]
Satmar violence
against others has increasingly spread against non-Jewish neighbors. "Recent
years," wrote Jonathan Mark in 1990, "have seen an explosion of tension between
all chasidim and their Black and Hispanic neighbors. Most recently, Hispanic
groups have complained that the Satmars act like they have the right of eminent
domain over Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood, where many Satmars reside.
They have charged that chasidic men have sexually harassed non-Jewish women,
that chasidic security patrols are actually racially motivated vigilantes."
[MARK, SATMAR, p. 4]
In the
more overtly political context (and not Orthodox), in an entire book about
assassinations (limited only to those deemed "political") carried out by Jews in
Palestine/Israel from 1882 to 1988, Israeli scholar Nachum Ben David itemizes 91 cases of "assassination
events" committed by Jews. (An assassination is defined by this author in his
title as "a rhetorical device for justice"). Most murder victims were other Jews
who were considered "traitors/collaborators/squealers/informers." [BEN DAVID, p.
418] "We are not dealing with
a lone fanatic killer [in these cases]," stresses Ben David, "but with a
premeditated planned act, committed by a group or by a representative of a
group." [BEN YEHUDA, p. xxi]
Aside from a possible
volume about Jewish gangster murders, no doubt a similar volume could be created
about Jewish assassinations under the auspices of Russian communism. Just
before, and after, the creation of the Soviet state, assassinations by Jews, in
one form or another, sometimes as secret police agents, are many. Mark
Zborowsky, for instance, (a later immigrant to America where he became a
university professor), in league with fellow Jews Naum Eitingon and Grigory
Rabinovich, was instrumental in the operation to murder Trotsky's son, Lev
Sedov. [VAKSBERG, p. 96] Arkady
Vaksberg notes another case of Jews murdering
Jews:
"The murder of two
Jews whom Stalin hated [Efraim Sklyansky
and Isiah Khurgin] had
been organized by two other Jews, Kanner
and Yagoda. Let us add
that Kanner's assistant, Bombin, and
Mekhil's assistants,
Makhovev and Yuzhak, were all Jewish."
[VAKSBERG, p.
28]
In 1904, the Russian
Minister of Interior, Vlacheslav Plehve, also fell to a Jewish assassin.
[LINDEMANN, A., 1997, p. 296] In
1906, in the Russian town of Grodno, "Jewish partisans assassinated the Russian
district commander of police." In 1908, the chief of police from another town,
Bialystok, came to Grodno. This time, "the Jew who tried to shoot him died in
prison." [LACEY, p. 18] In
September of 1911 another Jewish assassin, Dmitry Bogrov, shot and killed Pyotr
Stolypin, a prominent Russian official, at the Kiev Opera Theatre. [SINGER, N, p. 2] Another Jewish
would-be killer, Fanya Kaplan, also shot V. I. Lenin through the neck in a
failed assassination attempt in early communist Russia, saying that he had
"betrayed the Revolution." [LEVYTSKY, p. 29] On the same day, "the Cheka leader Uritsky was shot to death
in August 1918 by a distinguished Jewish poet and army officer named
Kannegiesser who 'was revolted by the fact that so many of the Bolsheviks were
Jewish.'" [WEYL, N., 1968, p. 198]
In 1926, another
Jewish assassin, Shalom Schwartzbard, murdered Ukrainian nationalist Symon
Petlura, in Paris. (Petlura was in exile from his homeland; he formerly led the
Ukrainian army against Bolshevik attack). As noted earlier, a Jewish woman was
also a member of the team that assassinated Tsar Alexander II. And, as noted
before also, those who directed (and participated in) the murder of the royal
family during the Russian Revolution were also largely Jewish. Even in
Argentina, "on May Day 1909, during a workers' demonstration in Buenos Aires, a
Jewish anarchist murdered a local police chief," thereby igniting anti-Jewish
rioting. [SACHAR, H., 1985, p. 281]
Elsewhere, during the
rise of Nazi fascism in Germany, notes Franklin Ford, "paradoxically, during
their movement's first years in power, Nazis were the victims, not the
perpetrators of two sensational murders of German's residing in foreign parts."
[FORD] In 1936 a Nazi official in Switzerland, Wilhelm Gustloff, was
assassinated by a Jewish student, David Frankfurter. In 1938 Ernst von Rath, a
German embassy official in Paris was killed by Herschel Grynszpan. The Nazis
used this act as an excuse to respond with intensified savagery to the German
Jewish population. Years earlier, in 1918, long before the Nazis came to power,
a Russian Jew, Yakov Blumkin, assassinated the German ambassador to Moscow,
Count Mirbach. [SUDOPLATOV, p. 189] Kurt Eisner, the Jewish prime minister
of Bavaria, was also assassinated in 1918 by Count Arco Valley, "a young man who
felt stigmatized by the fact that his mother was Jewish." [GRUNFELD, F., 1996,
p. 123]'
As Leon Schapiro notes about
late 19th century Russia and the formation of a communist base
there:
"When Jews thronged
into the party after 1881 the number of Jewish
terrorists was very
high. There were important Jewish terrorists,
like
Gershuni, for example,
in the socialist revolutionary party which
evolved during the
present century as the heir of the 'People's
Will'
... In more recent
times one could cite the extensive Jewish
participation in the
savageries of the Red Terror of the Cheka
[the
secret police] -- or
even events in Palestine." [SCHAPIRO, L., 1961,
p.
152]
In America, in 1892
famous Jewish anarchist Emma Goldman and two comrades decided to assassinate
millionaire Henry Clay Frick. "In desperation [Goldman] tried whoreing [sic]
(unsuccessfully) on 14th Street [in New York] to raise the money for a gun, and
[Alexander] Berkman went to Pittsburgh to pull the trigger." [SHULMAN, A., 1970,
p. 10] The assassination attempt by Berkman was carried out, but Frick survived
his wound.
Also in America, in
1974 Samuel Byck, another Jewish would-be assassin, embarked on a sensationally
bizarre suicidal scheme to kill President Richard Nixon. He murdered a security
guard at the Baltimore/Washington airport, stormed into a jet and demanded to
the pilots that it take off and follow his orders. His plan was to crash the
plane into the White House. Technically unable to accommodate him, Byck murdered
the two pilots before he was, in turn, shot and killed by authorities. [CLARKE,
J., p. 128-142]
More famous, of course, in
Texas, was Jack Ruby (born Jacob Rubinstein), the (Jewish) murderer of Lee
Harvey Oswald, the man who is believed to have killed John F. Kennedy. Ruby had
interests in six Dallas-area strip-tease clubs. As Gerald Posner
notes:
"Ruby often resulted
to violence with his employees, and lost the tip
of his left index
fingers when one bit it off during a scuffle. He
beat
one of his musicians
with brass knuckles, cracked another's head
with a blackjack,
knocked another's teeth out, and put the club's
handyman in the
hospital with a severe beating. To avoid paying
the
club's cigarette girl
$50 in back wages, he threatened to throw he
down the stairs until
she relented her claim ... He was not above
attacking people from
behind, kicking men in the groin or face once
he had them to the
floor, or even striking women ... He was often
malicious, forcing
beaten victims to crawl out of the club on hands
and knees." [POSNER,
p. 357]
Ruby's killing of Oswald erased his
looming testimony, as well as any other person's or organization's involvement
in the most famous political assassination in American history. "In Dallas,
Texas," noted Jewish scholar Barnet Litvinoff, "a man born with the name
Rubinstein who subsequently eliminated its Jewish-sounding suffix took it upon
himself to avenge the martyrdom of a President. He gave his Jewishness as one of
the reasons for doing so." [LITVINOFF, B., p. 18] At Ruby's trial, Patrick Dean (the
police sergeant in charge of security where Oswald was killed) testified that
shortly after the shooting he talked to Ruby about what he had just done. One of
the reasons Ruby killed Oswald, the killer told him, was "because he wanted the
world to know that Jews do have guts." [BELLI, p. 167] When Kennedy was shot,
Ruby was in the advertising offices of the Dallas Morning News, troubled
by a full page advertisement in that morning's newspaper. As Gerald Posner
notes,
"The entire page was a
black-bordered advertisement, headed in
large block letters,
'Welcome Mister Kennedy,' and the text accused
the President of being
a Communist tool. It was signed by 'The
American Fact-Finding
Committee, Bernard Weissman, Chairman.
Ruby was very
disturbed that the News should have run such a
demeaning
advertisement and was dismayed that it was signed
by
someone with a Jewish
name." [POSNER, 1993, p. 371]
Ruby mingled with a
variety of underworld figures, and was involved in gun smuggling to Cuba, facts
that has fueled in later years a variety of conspiracy theories about who really
killed Kennedy. And for what reason. Jim Marris notes
that
"The smuggling of arms
to Cuba was overseen by Norman 'Roughhouse'
Rothman, a burly
associate of Miami's mob boss Santos Trafficante who
managed Trafficante's
Sans Souci in Havana. At the same time Rothman
reportedly was
splitting Havana slot machines with [Cuban
dictator]
Batista's
brother-in-law." [MARRIS, p. 391]
In his 1989
investigation of the Kennedy assassination, Marris also devotes an entire
chapter entitled, "Did Ruby and Oswald Know Each Other?," itemizing the
testimony of those who claimed that the two were not strangers to each other.
[MARRIS, p. 402-414]
"There were many signs
that Ruby wasn't just a harmless scoundrel," noted Newsweek in 1993, "and
the investigation into his background was remarkably -- almost willfully -- shallow. FBI
agents interviewed hundreds of his acquaintances, but they barely followed up on
obvious leads about his underworld friends and his trips to Cuba." [BECK, p.
94]
While Ruby was locked
in prison and sentenced to death for the murder of Oswald, the London
Guardian notes that Ruby
"was raving by the end
-- there was no bigger conspiracy theorist than
Jack Ruby. He
became convinced America had begun a pogrom against
the Jews because
of what he, or Oswald, or both of them, had done."
[BYGRAVE]