Sandra Myers
The Kosher Nostra, Part 1: Jews and the Mafia
Sandra Myers - The Kosher Nostra, Part 1 Jews and the Mafia
- So good afternoon everybody. Sorry, if I was a bit slow starting. Welcome. And this afternoon I’m going to try and give you an insight into the Jews and how they operated within the mafia. As the title said, it’s called The Kosher Nostra. So Trudy and my other colleagues have really guided us through centuries of Jewish history, chronicled the achievements of eminent, upstanding, talented, and influential men and women who have hopefully changed our Jewish narrative for the better. Today I hope to present the other side of the coin. And during the early decades of the 20th century, several circumstances allowed organised crime to flourish, particularly in the United States. Gangsters, many of whom were Jewish attained notoriety and often amassed enormous fortunes. Many, if they were wily enough, operated for decades with relative impunity. And if they managed to avoid the assassin’s bullet, found some degree of respectability. Others still gained mythical status for their defence of their co-religionists. So one way or another, the Jewish gangsters left their mark on history. Were they hoodlums or were they heroes? We’ll have to decide. What image does the Kosher Capone conjure up? And, no, I’m not going to tell you that ancestry.com has suddenly decided that Al Capone was Jewish. Could we have the first photo up please, Corina? Okay, so this is Al Capone, and a friend of mine actually sent me a very funny caption for him, and it said, “I asked him if he forgave his enemies.” He said, “Only God can forgive my enemies, and it’s my job to arrange their meeting as quickly as possible.” So what names spring to mind when you think of the mobsters, if you do? Al Capone is here, Lucky Luciano, or Albert Anastasia, all Sicilian emigrees to the United States. Maybe then we have some Jewish gangsters.
Could we have the second picture up, please? This is Bugsy Siegel, movie star handsome. His dates were 1906 to 1947, and he was credited with creating Las Vegas. We then go on to Meyer Lansky maybe. Could we have the next photo? Who was born Maier Suchowljansky, if I pronounced it correctly. He was a brilliant, brilliant mathematician who became the Mob’s Accountant. His dates were 1902 to 1983, he was actually born in Grodno in Russia. His story has been well chronicled. In fact, there was a biopic on one of the movie channels recently with Harvey Keitel playing him, and it was a bit simplistic, but it was quite interesting. But the one thing that was very interesting about Meyer Lansky, he was the only Jew ever to be have refused the right of return to Israel. And this was through Golda Meir at the time. There was a reason for it, which I did hear, and how true it is, I don’t know, that she had made an arrangement with the United States government. Someone listening may know more about this, that in return for not allowing Lansky to settle in Israel, but deporting him back to the United States where he was wanted for money laundering and fraud, non-payment of taxes, the United States would supply Israel with aircraft. How correct that is? I don’t know, but maybe somebody does, but I thought it was quite an interesting explanation. Then we can go on to Longie Zwillman. His dates were 1891 to 1959, and I’m going to talk about a little him about later on. Then we have the dapper, Arnold Rothstein.
Could I have the photo up, please? Right. He was nicknamed The Godfather of Organised Crime. And unlike most of the other gangsters, he was a rich man’s son. He was The Brain behind the mob, and he understood that hypocrisy, exclusion, and greed were the truths of early 20th century capitalism, and he came to dominate them. According to a crime writer by the name of Leo Katcher, Rothstein transformed organised crime from a thuggish activity by hoodlums into a big business run like a corporation with himself at the top. Rothstein showed the young and uneducated hoodlums of the Bowery how to have style. And Lucky Luciano actually credited him with showing him how to dress. And very much the image of the gangster that you get on the movies was from Arnold Rothstein with the hat and the shirt and the tie, very dapper. So then I’d like to go on to photo five, please. Lepke Buchalter. Okay, he was the only… His dates were 1897 to 1944, and he was the architect of Murder, Incorporated, which I’m sure is familiar to a lot of you, which comprised of a merciless group of up to 250 hitmen, guns for hire. And Lepke Buchalter had the dubious distinction of being one of only two mob bosses ever executed at Sing Sing after being convicted of murder. He went to the electric chair for his part in the assassination of 14 individuals between 1936 and 1939. He had guns for hire, as I said, for Murder, Incorporated. And he was estimated to have grossed over $21 million a year in today’s currency.
So I can go on the list, I can go on to include approximately 40 known Jewish gangsters who exerted significant influence on American life between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Second, but be under no illusion, even though the Jewish mobsters were comparatively few, they were just as villainous, as barbaric, and as immoral as their Sicilian or Irish or Polish counterparts at the time. So let’s think, does the very notion of the Jewish mobster go against the Jewish stereotype? The stereotype historically has asserted that Jews, by and large were physically unthreatening. They were meek, they were compliant. In the new world they committed tax evasion, fraud, Ponzi schemes, but really rarely bootlegging, murder, extortion, or racketeering until, until the Volstead Act prohibition, until that became law one minute past midnight on January the 17th, 1920. But a bit more about that later. The heyday of the American gangsters generally associated with the 20s and 30s, but this is not to suggest that gangs and crime syndicates began here. They rose to power through the saloons, the gambling houses, and the brothels of 19th century American Wild West. And through the murderous war of labour and capital during the so-called Gilded Age of the robber barons. So the robber barons, I would say just a few of them were, Henry Ford, who was… His dates were 1863 to 1947; Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish immigrant, 1835 to 1919; we had Cornelius Vanderbilt, 1794 to 1877; and John D. Rockefeller, 1839 to 1937, the legends of American capitalism. Men who despite many having humble origins became successful businessmen, generous philanthropists, and used whatever means at their disposal.
Profit was definitely the name of their game. And it was not beyond the principles of these early industrialists to use unethical or unscrupulous methods by restricting the production of goods and raising the prices. However, it was the arrival of the Sicilian immigrants towards the latter end of the 1800s that has been generally acknowledged by historians to have launched the surge of mob violence in America. The Sicilians brought with them a tradition of crime, retained within one family, passed from father to son, and very often from wives to daughters whose roots began in their homeland hundreds of years before. It was now allowed to flourish relatively uncontrolled in their adoptive country of America. Initially, like the Jews, they settled in the overcrowded, filthy tenement slums of the big cities, predominantly the Lower East Side of New York, but also in Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Michigan. Here they lived in close proximity to other new immigrants arriving in their thousands from Europe. Inevitably it would seem interethnic rivalry led to street gang fights, mostly involving adolescent boys. In the Jewish districts, particularly in New York, immigrant Jews were regularly victimised and attached by young hoodlums from other ethnic groups. Jewish boys, many barely teenagers with limited education, and facing appalling discrimination now saw their duty to protect their neighbours from these racist gangs. Young Jewish boys, sons of the poorest and newest immigrants saw their parents harassed by street gangs and took up the challenge themselves to defend their people. So now instead of the parents defending the child, it was the child defending the parent. Gangs of Irish, Sicilian, Polish, and Jewish young men soon carved out their boundaries, deploying swift and often violent justice to those who strayed into rival territory. For the Jewish boys, it was not simply a matter of protecting one’s turf against rivals, but part of a deeper commitment to the safety of one’s people.
Strangely enough, ironically, this brought the Jewish hoodlums a small measure of admiration from their community, but this is definitely not to imply that they were heroes. Far from it, far from it. But in many instances what they did manage to do was to free the Jewish community from the stigma of weakness and powerlessness. Respect for these gangs, for these gang members, as tough and fearless protection, protectors of their ethnic groups became something akin to idolization amongst Jewish youngsters growing up in the ghettos. And in fact, even the talk show host, Larry King, who was born Larry Harvey Zeiger to Orthodox Jewish parents, from Belarus admitted that as a boy in the 1930s, the Jewish gangsters were his heroes, even the bad ones, he said. Several Jewish gangs flourished on the Lower East Side, many of them were merciless killers like Max Kid Zwerbach. He was eventually assassinated, but he prided himself in keeping the Italian and gangs. And this is his words, “The Irish, the wasps in the mix”, as he called them from invading Jewish neighbourhoods. As a youngster, Abner Longie Zwillman, all 6'2 of him, and I’m going to talk a little bit more about him later on, he later became the crime boss of New Jersey. He earned the gratitude of the local Jewish peddlers who were regularly beaten up because he and his crew, ironically named the Happy Ramblers, defended them from assaults by Irish thugs. When he was in trouble, the cry would go out, which is Yiddish for “Call the tall one.” Longie would drop anything he was doing and rush to help. And strangely this reputation stayed with him for the rest of his life. So now by the turn of the 20th century, technology has now changed the world of crime.
With the advent of affordable cars, the Thompson machine gun and the telephone, successful local gangsters were now able to expand their enterprises, frequently extending control over entire cities and even entire states. Gradually the young Jewish mobsters moved from street gang status to professional criminals initially through the labour racket wars. They hired themselves out both to the management and the unions as leg breakers and sluggers. And several came to dominate the labour extortion business. It was, however, the introduction of prohibition in 1920, which proved the channel through which the gangsters amassed huge fortune. And incidentally, 50% of these gangsters were actually Jewish. Could we have the next picture up, please? Okay, so I’m going to talk about the Volstead Act, which was the name given informally to prohibition. And this is a photograph of The Purple Gang that I haven’t talked to you about. You’ve got their names pretty much underneath there. Okay. Perhaps prohibition is now regarded as a footnote, a bizarre footnote in American history between the First World War and the Depression. It was a noble experiment, so they said, intended to provide the solution to widespread social problems. Industrialists supported the ban on drink, desperate to ensure their workers arrived sober each day at the factories, while the government considered that the grain used to distil alcohol would be better deployed helping their allies in Europe who had a lot of their crops destroyed. And I know this is happening even now between the war in Ukraine and Russia, especially in Ukraine who do supply a lot of the grain.
And I know that that’s going to be a big problem for them. But ultimately, prohibition did fail because the majority of adults wanted to carry on drinking. Plus, of course, the act itself was riddled with contradictions, biases, and corruption. There was no specific ban on the consumption of liquor. And the fact this absolutely was a legal nightmare, and with so many social experiments, prohibition had unforeseen consequences. The main unforeseen consequence was serving as a catalyst, which boosted organised crime and political corruption. Whilst the intention was to reduce crime, to reduce the tax burden, and to reduce the people in prison and poorhouses, plus improving the general health of Americans, it had little impact, and almost did the opposite. The National Prohibition Act was the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which was chaotically conceived, and prohibited. And I’m going to quote, “The production, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquor for drinking purposes.” And why I say, “For drinking purposes”, because it was still going to be allowed for industrial or medicinal uses. So, of course, what did a lot of people do? They signed on as sick, and they had alcohol prescribed for medicinal uses. And then, of course, the whole kit and caboodle was left to the federal governments and states to enforce the ban by appropriate legislation because there wasn’t one universal legislation for this. The President of the time, Woodrow Wilson, vetoed the Act, but it was actually passed. It was passed in October 1919, and brought into effect at midnight on January the 17th, 1920. One hour later, the infringement of the Act was committed, the era of bootlegging and speakeasy had dawned.
During the three month period before the ban became law, various gangs had stockpiled alcohol and started distributing. Now this is a photograph of The Purple Gang who operated out of Detroit, Michigan. And why they had an advantage because they were less than two miles actually from the Canadian border, and they were able to… And in fact, the Canadian border, I understand near Detroit is actually south of Detroit, it cuts in a little bit. And they were able to hijack the vans that were coming in from Canada that were being brought in with alcohol. So what was extraordinary about The Purple Gang is, I’m going to tell you, they were solely Jewish. Every single member of this gang were Jewish. And in fact, most of them were brothers. Three of them, one; one lot of three brothers; one lot of two brothers. And they were to Detroit what Al Capone and his gang were to Chicago. From the mid 1920s to the early 1930s, their members were the leaders of the city underworld. In certain respects, The Purple Gang was like any other criminal group during prohibition, or for that matter, any other area. They were motivated by the prospect of power and money, and all came from humble origins. They took the life of crime, albeit briefly, and didn’t survive very well, as I said, very briefly. One characteristic unique to this group, as I mentioned, was they were completely, all members were Jewish, and they controlled completely the crime of Detroit, which was, it was really quite interesting because most of the other American gangs worked across interethnic alliances, but The Purple Gang controlled Detroit entirely on their own. So the brothers were the Bernstein brothers: Abe, Raymond, Joey, and Izzy. Sorry, there were four of them.
The Keywells: Harry and Philip; and the Fleishers: Sam and Harry. Like the contemporaries, they were involved in various criminal enterprises: Bootlegging, hijacking, gambling operations, narcotics, and kidnappings, etc., etc., not to mention a few homicides along the way. They were all children of immigrants. I don’t know if anyone who is listening comes from Detroit. They lived on the Lower East Side around the area of Hastings Street neighbourhood, and most of them attended the same school, which was Bishop School. And I’m sure that to some of you that will ring a bell. Each of them at school was placed in the division for problem children, and they operated initially as pickpockets, mostly in an outdoor trading area called the Eastern Market, but soon learned that loan sharking, extortion, and hijack were more lucrative. Eventually, of course, they attracted unwanted attention from the police, the district attorney, the press, and the public, particularly after several rival gangs were murdered, which they did as example to potential rivals. Most of the gang were caught, they were prosecuted and convicted. At which point a local Sicilian gang headed by Joseph Zerilli, I’m not going to speak about him, moved in. So what happened to these members of The Purple Gang? Harry Millman was gunned down in November 1937 in a restaurant, aged 26. Abe Axler, and Eddie Fletcher, respectively aged 32 and 35 were assassinated in 1933. Ziggy Selbin, and Irving Shapiro, both the same age were assassinated in October 1929. Harry and Sam Fleisher were incarcerated in Alcatraz.
The remainder, one of the Keywells, Morris Raider, Ray Bernstein, were all sentenced in 1931 to life imprisonment. Only Abe Bernstein continued to operate a gambling syndicate in Miami after prohibition, and died in 1968, age 76. So I think collectively one would say, for them crime really didn’t pay. They looked a bit of a shady lot, anyway, but this is really interesting. And also, of course, if anyone knows Elvis Presley’s song of “Jailhouse Rock”, The Purple Gang were immortalised in that, the whole rhythm section was The Purple Gang. So he knew about them as well. Prohibition was eventually repealed after 13 years in 1933 by the 21st Amendment, effectively cancelling out the 18th. And this was actually quite unique in American constitutional history because it was the first time the only constitutional amendment in US history was ever rescinded. And as far as I gather, it still stands today. Correct me somebody if I’m wrong, but as far as I understand, that’s the case. So why was it repealed, apart from its obvious failure and the growing dissolution with it? Quite simply, quite simply, with the onset of the Great Depression, the government ironically needed the return of the liquor taxes. It was estimated to have cost them over $11 billion in lost revenue, and moreover, it costs $300 million to enforce. So it was generally a lose-lose situation. Conversely, the crime bosses, the gangsters had really flourished under prohibition. Al Capone was apparently making the equivalent of $1.4 billion a year in today’s money, while spending over $0.5 million a month in bribery to the police, to the politicians, and federal investigators.
The main problem the gangsters now had… This is really quite funny, is what to do with all the cash that was coming in because it actually came in in dollar bills. The legalisation of gambling in Nevada in 1931 solved the problem for them. Prohibition money was now funnelled into the new casinos and hotels, and here’s where Meyer Lansky came in. He would wire money for the mob to the brokers in Switzerland who would cover the mobster’s tracks, reinvest the cash in legitimate businesses. And hey presto, Capone was the only one who actually probably didn’t have the Jewish brain, and he was hounded for tax evasion, for which he eventually went to prison. He was never indicted for any murders, but that was the only thing they could actually, the Feds could only actually indict him for. So even though the cash grab came to the end after prohibition, the sophisticated money laundering and black market business schemes remained. With the biggest gangs moving on to drug supply, they moved into prostitution, they moved into gambling. And it was ironically the gangs who now had the cash, and the economy was actually cash starved. So anybody who wanted to establish a legitimate enterprise had to approach organised crime. There was no cash available or very little cash available in the banks. This really brought loan sharking to the fore, and it became a major industry. I want to talk about Longie Zwillman now, and I don’t know if I’ve got a photograph of him up. Did I have…? I don’t think I had a photograph of him.
But by 1931, following the internecine Castellammarese… 1930 until April 1931, Lucky Luciano had successfully eliminated the old-world Sicilian mafia. The bosses like Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano who had taken control previously were now no longer, they had been murdered. Lucky Luciano convened a conference in New York alongside Meyer Lansky, his longtime friend and associate, and they managed to convince the Jewish American mobsters of the benefits to be gained by cooperating with them, by cooperating with the Italian American mafia. Some of the most feared mobsters, including Jacob Shapiro, Lepke Buchalter, who I will talk about a bit, Hyman Curly Holtz, etc., etc. came to the meeting, and they finally agreed to cooperate with the Italian, with the Sicilian Mafia, and the press stubbed them the National Crime Syndicate, which I’m sure everybody is familiar with. So one member there was a gentleman by the name of Joe Doc Stacher. He was born in 1902 and died in 1997, he was a friend of Meyer Lansky and Abe Zwillman, he ran their gambling operations. He extraordinary had his United States citizenship revoked, and I’d never heard… Well, I haven’t because I’m not American, hadn’t heard of many people who that’s happened to.
He immigrated to Israel in 1965, and he died in 1977, he was buried secretly in Israel with the nameplate on his grave altered to hide his burial site. Only eight men attended his funeral, and the mourners had to bring in the photographer and the reporter to make up the minyan to say Kaddish at his grave. I thought that was quite an interesting story. And then we’ve got Harry “Big Greenie” Greenberg, 1909 to 1939, who was a childhood friend of Bugsy Siegel. Siegel actually eventually murdered him. He was first arrested in 1927 for drowning Benjamin Bugsy Goldstein, another Bugsy. And the Bugsy was a nickname that Benjamin Siegel hated, but it was alluding to his sort of little bit of madness, which is why they called him Bugsy. And apparently Edward G. Robinson, supposedly based his tough guy movie persona on Goldstein. Goldstein was sent to the electric chair in 1941, obviously, which Edward G. Robinson wasn’t, but anyway. With the exception of Meyer Lansky, Longie Zwillman was the most feared and respected member of the Jewish mafia. Not only being one of the big six in the National Crime Syndicate, but he was also the founder of the United States nationwide syndicate known as Murder, Incorporated. Although this was eventually headed up by Lepke Buchalter. Zwillman was born in New Jersey to Russian immigrant parents, one of seven children. His criminal activities began by selling lottery numbers when he was about 13, and coincided with the disappearance of his father. He was first arrested in March 1927 for assault and battery, convicted to six months in prison and fined $1,000. He started off as a fruit and vegetable sellar, but he actually eventually controlled much of the illicit alcohol, which flowed into New Jersey during prohibition.
This reputedly brought him an income of over $2 million a year, he used that as well to finance the underworld rackets. His power was further consolidated after the murder of Dutch Schultz in 1935. And for more than 30 years, Zwillman was one of America’s leading gangsters. He had connections everywhere, he was on intimate terms with both the Italian and the Jewish mobsters, particularly Lucky Luciano. All the while keeping his family totally ignorant of his activities. Post prohibition, Longie became involved in hotels, restaurants, movie production, and industry ranging from the East to the West Coast of the United States, as well as in Cuba, in Havana, and at one time was even romantically involved with Jean Harlow. In 1932, during a period of heightened anti-Semitic attacks in America, and in an effort to gain some respectability, Zwillman reputed offered a sizable reward for information on the abduction of Charles Lindbergh, Jr., although he wasn’t Jewish, who of course was sadly murdered. I don’t know if they ever found his body, but that was the story. But having earned his fortune, Longie decided not to live in two worlds, he quit the mob. He quit the mob in 1939, and he married Mary de Groot Mendels Steinbach. She was a socialite, and a divorced mother with a five-year-old son. They had a lavish wedding, attended, it’s said by 300 of the creme de la creme of the criminal racketeers. Despite forging a father-son relationship with his wife’s child, Longie refused to adopt him legally. Why did he refuse to adopt him legally?
He knew his reputation and he said, “If I adopt you, you’ll carry my name, you’ll be marked for life, and that won’t be an advantage. No matter what you do, how well you behave, you’ll be pointed out as Zwillman. I’ve seen it happen to the rest of my family, and I don’t want it to happen to you.” Longie Zwillman was very close to many celebrities, including Joe DiMaggio, at one time married to Marilyn Monroe, as I’m sure you all know. But soon after Longie’s marriage, he was charged with federal contempt of court. He refused to answer questions about the disappearance of Lepke Buchalter, which I’ll go on to. Although he was found in contempt and sentenced to six months prison, this was overturned on appeal, and the authorities looked for another route. Zwillman at that time had moved his family to a 20-room mansion, English style. And after the war, this caught the attention of the federal investigators. This luxurious accommodation they maintained could certainly not have been bought out or paid for from the meagre reports that he had filed on his income tax. Several attempts at prosecution failed, but he was finally indicted by a federal grand jury in Newark on two counts of tax evasion in 1947 and 1948, which again failed when two jurors were apparently bribed by the mob. On February the 27th, 1959, this is somewhere later, at the age of 54, he was found hanging in the basement of his house.
Although the official verdict was suicide, marks were found around his wrists, which indicated he may have been tied up before. And according to his son, Zwillman was suffering from ill health and anxiety over the prospect of further investigations. At the same time, the problems within the syndicate had increased and he had incurred the wrath of Vito Genovese when he voted against his consolidation of power. Then he guessed wrong, he backed Albert Anastasia against Genovese. And after Anastasia was murdered in 1957, other crime leaders began edging in on his New Jersey rackets. When Zwillman was buried in accordance to Jewish tradition, he was buried the next day, his funeral was widely reported across America with apparently over 1,500 people attended, controlled by the police, together with his 80-year-old mother, a little lady with a headscarf. Now this was reported in the newspapers who cried over his grave, “My son, my son, my abler, my abler.” That’s what the paper said, I’m not making it up. I wanted to go on just as a slight digression to a gentleman by the name of Harry Pittsburgh Strauss. He was a prolific contract killer for Murder, Incorporated in the 1930s, and reportedly killed over 100 men. Some historians name it as high as 500 using variety of methods, including shooting, stabbing, ice picking, drowning, live burial, strangulation, you name it, he did it.
In fact, he actually never carried a weapon on him, but when he took his victims to the place he was going to murder them, he would improvise with whatever he could find. He was never convicted actually until he was found guilty of the homicide that sent him to Sing Sing, and that was the murder of Martin Buggsy Goldstein. After all of this, and he was eventually sent to the electric chair. Okay, so that’s him, but anyway, now I’m going to go on to Lepke Buchalter. Do we have a photograph? Do we have the photograph back of him? Corina, please. Thank you. Okay, I just want to mention Murder, Incorporated. I just touched on it, but I want to tell you a little bit more about it. This was the organised crime group composing mostly of Jewish and American-Italian gangsters, which was founded around 1930 and acted as the enforcement arm of the National Crime Syndicate. Most of the members were recruited from the Manhattan and Brooklyn neighbourhoods of Brownsville, East New York and Ocean Hill, and was really a roll call of mobster aristocracy. You had Albert Anastasia, you had Joe Adonis, Lepke Buchalter, who you can see here, Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, Benjamin Siegel, Bugsy Siegel; and Al Capone, there was Frank Costello. Just basically a roll hall of all the names that are so familiar now. But it was originally headed by Buchalter, but later Anastasia took over. Murder, Incorporated, was credited for being responsible between 400 and 1,000 contract killings on behalf of the National Crime Syndicate until it was exposed in the early 1940s by a former member, Abraham “Kid Twist” Reles. They all had nicknames.
In the trials that followed, many members were convicted and executed, and Abe Reles himself died suspiciously falling from a window. But back to Lepke Buchalter, he was born in 1897, and executed in March 1944. He was the only American mob boss, and I say this very succinctly, mob boss to be executed in the electric chair. Two of his associates went with him, but none of the other crime bosses were actually sent to the electric chair in Sing Sing. He was a good student at school, but his father suddenly died in 1909, and his mother moved to Arizona. He went out of control, he turned to burglary, he turned to assault, and he was eventually sent to a juvenile reformatory in Connecticut. And then his first trip to Sing Sing on grand larceny, and then burglary for 30 months. Eventually he was 25 on his release, and at that time he met up with an old school friend. And through force and of fear, they infiltrated totally the garment industry, which at that time employed approximately one million workers. They gained control of the production of all aspects, all aspects of garment production, from the cutters to the shippers, to the packers to everything. And then they threatened strikes against the factory owners, if they didn’t pay them, obviously extortion money, and exercise control over the unions at the same time while being paid to prevent strikes by the factory bosses. By the age of 30, Lepke was a millionaire and supported his siblings through college, as well as sending money to his elder brother who actually became a rabbi. So you have to look at these mobsters, many of them came from very large families.
One came from a family of seven, Lepke came from a family of 11, and each of them found their own way, but it fell to some of them to become mobsters. The organisation called Murder, Incorporated, actually Buchalter was probably their best client. And as I mentioned, the hitmen who carried out the contact killings were mostly from minor New York gangs with no connections to the major families. They were paid $150 a month retention, as well as $1,000 bonus for each hit. In September 1936, Murder, Incorporated, acting on Buchalter’s orders gunned down an ex-trucker named Joseph Rosen, a father of five who refused to pay tribute and had threatened to expose him to Thomas Dewey, then the senator and the New York chief prosecutor, and eventually its governor and presidential aspirant. It was this that actually was to prove Lepke’s downfall. At that time, he’d been married to Betty Wasserman, a British widow herself, the daughter of Russian immigrants, and had a five-year-old child who he adopted. In 1937, he’d managed to avoid the public spotlight, but was being investigated by Thomas Dewey. He deserted his wife and he went underground. And in attempt to eliminate any witnesses to his past crimes, he ordered hits on approximately 30, 30 men he considered to be his enemies, but one man survived the wounds and became a prosecution witness. Okay, so where are we going now? I’m going to talk about Arnold Rothstein. Could we put the picture back up again? I think it was the first one. Okay. So this is my final profile. How am I going for time?
Okay, this is Arnold Rothstein. He wasn’t born into a poor family of immigrants, he was born into a wealthy New York family. He was known as The Brain, Mr. Big, The Fixer, or The Man Uptown. He became the kingpin of the Jewish mob in New York City, and it was he who transformed organised crime from a thuggish activity into big business. He organised reputably corruption in professional athletics. He was alleged to have fixed the Blue Sox baseball series in 1919. I dunno, if anyone listening is a baseball fan, but that was quite legendary. Although he was never convicted or indicted. He was also the first person to actually identify prohibition as being a big new business opportunity. As I said, he was born into a wealthy Manhattan family, again, one of his brothers became a rabbi. He began shooting dice as a child, and when asked why he became a gambler, he answered, “I always gambled, I can’t remember when I didn’t. Maybe I gambled just to show my father, he couldn’t tell me what to do. But I don’t think so, I think I gambled because I loved the excitement. And when I gambled, nothing else matters.” He was a major success. By the time he was 20, he established his own casino and ran rackets at the racetrack, all of which made him a millionaire. Prohibition underscored his millions, he diversified into bootlegging, loan sharking, narcotics, smuggling, and speakeasies. And he even established his own transatlantic freighters that brought in scotch whiskey. By 1925, he was one of the most powerful criminals in America, and the largest bootlegger with an estimated worth of $150 million today. He also arbitrated disputes between rival gangs to the extent that Tammany Hall set the seat of the Democratic Party, the political machine actually controlled New York City, and state politics acknowledged him as being a necessary ally to running the city.
Okay, so I can talk about his death. He was actually shot apparently over his refusal to honour a $300,000 gambling debt, which in today’s money was calculated to be $4.8 million. He survived for two days after the shooting, it was in a Central Park Hotel, but he nevertheless refused to identify his assassin. So I’ve gone through the really seedy parts of the mob, and I would just like to reiterate that the most fascinating aspect of the Jewish mobsters was that their activities in the mob were just one generation. They viewed their criminal activities as a vehicle by which to escape poverty. They were adamant that neither their children nor their grandchildren would ever follow their path. For the Jewish boys, this was strictly a one generation occupation. Even more fascinating is that very often none of their immediate families even had any idea of the activities in which their fathers were involved, often not until they were either murdered or imprisoned. Bugsy Siegel’s daughter, for example, is on record saying that she had no idea of her father’s work, telling everybody he was retired when she was asked. Lepke Buchalter’s daughter said he was a very mild-mannered man, always had time for her, very quietly spoken, she had no idea. Bugsy Siegel’s daughter again said, she always emphasised what a wonderful father he was, he was very generous, he was loving. The only thing she did concede was that he had a violent temper. And I guess this was somewhat of an understatement. Sicilian and Italian mobsters, on the other hand, had viewed crime as a way of life, very much a family affair to be handed down through the generations.
Moreover, many of the crime families intermarried. The children of three of the five New York crime family bosses actually married into each other’s families. But the American Jews quietly buried the public memory of their gangster past. And I’m sorry if this doesn’t sit well, but this is presumably what, this is what I believe. Unlike the mafia, the famous Jewish American gangsters like Meyer Lansky, Dutch Schultz, or Bugsy Siegel founded no crime families. Jewish mob criminality in America was a phenomenon manifesting itself through the children of impoverished, and oppressed immigrant parents. It arose from dislocation and poverty where language and custom made the community vulnerable to undesirables. The gangsters wanted a better life for their children. The children, many became lawyers, they became accountants, doctors, even politicians or ambassadors, such as Walter Annenberg, whose father, Moses, was a convicted criminal. Meyer Lansky’s youngest son attended West Point Military Academy, apparently accepted on his own merit; Chuck Workman was the son of Charlie Bug Workman, the murderer of Dutch Schultz, who became a golf pro. Despite their violent reputation, many American Jewish gangsters were held as heroes by their communities, particularly as the 1930s progressed, and the rise of Nazism and antisemitism became more violent. The gangster’s sense of obligation to protect their communities counteracted the often tentative and cautionary response by the American Jewish establishment.
The Jewish establishment were desperately nervous not to stir up any further anti-Jewish sentiment, but the mobsters thought nothing, thought little, nothing of using their muscle to disrupt the Nazi rallies or the marches. They caused considerable harm, but were very careful never to actually beat anybody to death. They broke their arms, they smashed their faces, they broke their teeth, and maybe we could do a little bit more with that today. And when it came to the establishment of the state of Israel, the gangsters once again stood up to be counted. And that’s my next presentation, if and when I get the opportunity. And I thank you for all your attention. And if anybody has any questions, I’d be very happy to deal with them. Can I find the questions? Tamara, how do I find the questions? I go on to here.
Q&A and Comments:
Okay. Shelly, I think I answered your question, particularly that the Jewish mobsters children didn’t go into their father’s criminal enterprises, without doubt.
Rita, thank you for your comment about the article. The Canadian Liquor Barons who are exporting… I’m sorry, I don’t know very much about this, all I know is that they came very quickly to the fore. And as I said, The Purple Gang were very quick to use them. Perhaps that’s something I could look up and speak about. Thank you very much.
Detroit, Michigan is separated from Windsor, Ontario. Yes, which is the… I think, yes, there was a bridge. Yes, it’s closed, that’s sad, and a tunnel that existed. Yes, I know that. Thank you very…
Your great uncle worked on the tunnel. Wow! Okay. The USA has a Mafia Hall of Fame. I wonder if it has a Jewish section. It’s something to follow-up to see if find out, I can’t imagine that it doesn’t. They also lived in the… Diane, they also lived on the 12th Street area in Detroit. Keywells became a very high-class wealthy family, their descendants were social friends of my husband and me. Oh, wow! That’s interesting, okay.
The Radner family became wealthy, Gilda Radner, yes. There’s a few books here recommended. Okay.
The Bronfmans, yes. They were one of the American families. I didn’t know that they were involved in the liquor producing, but I did read about the Bronfmans, and presumably that’s the same family as the Bronfmans who are very prominent now.
[Speaker] Canadian family, the Bronfmans.
They were Canadian. Sorry, did I not say Canadian? I beg your pardon, the Bronfman family were Canadian. I’m sorry, yes. They manufactured liquor, which was shipped across to the US from the Saskatchewan border within the US.
One of the Bronfman family was killed in a gunfight near Bienfait, Saskatchewan, as there was a dispute over liquor. Hmm, I’m not surprised. I’m surprised it’s only one, I would’ve thought many of them met an unsightly end that way. Thank you very much for your comments, Suzanne.
Arnold Rothstein was always considered to be the gambler who arranged the fix behind. Yep, I think I did mention that.
Oh, Longie Zwillman, he was named Longie because he was 6'2. It’s Z-W-I-L-L-M-A-N. The Seagram family, yes, I don’t… Oh, okay, thank you.
The gangsters versus the Nazis. Yes, that’s all very interesting.
Q: Were there women gangsters?
A: Hmm, well, I’m not sure if there were a lot of women gangsters, but there was one woman moll, a gangster’s moll who actually turned state’s evidence, but I honestly can’t remember her name, to be honest.
Q: Do you think Buchalter was executed when the other mob bosses weren’t because he was Jewish?
A: Hmm, I pass on that one, Shelly. I wouldn’t like to comment, I can only think that perhaps it was an example, they were using him as an example. I truly wouldn’t like to say.
Q: Did Murder, Incorporated, kill only other gangsters?
A: No, they didn’t. Mostly they did, obviously. I mean, you’ve got Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre and they clearly made continuous efforts to eliminate any opposition, but I don’t know anyone who would pay presumably. I can’t imagine that they were that fussy. Money was money.
Okay. Blue Sox, Black Sox. Oh, I’m sorry, David. That shows that I’m definitely not a baseball fan, nor I am an American. Sorry about that, guys. Thank you for your comments.
Tough Jews, yes. The book by Rich Cohen actually is quite fascinating. Yeah. Stuart, my mother said in New York during prohibition, Jewish mobsters would pay local families to make beer and distil Yes. And pick up the illegal beverages weekly to deliver to speakeasies. Yes. I did read about that. In fact, I think they even sometimes gave out the recipes. And in fact, my old grandmother, I remember when I was a child, used to make wine from cherries. And I was explaining this to somebody, she used to put the cherries in a sweet jar, put sugar, leave it for so long to ferment, turn the jars over, add more sugar. And I think I was about five or six, and I remember doing this, and it was really strong. It was really strong, and that was her local brew.
Nick Arnstein went to Sing Sing and later married, had two children with Fanny Brice. The relationship was the story of Funny Girl starring Barbra Streisand, the subject of Saturday’s lockdown lecture.
Arnstein was ironically played in the film version by Omar Sharif. Yeah. Al Capone left for Alcatraz, took over the Chicago Outfit. When he died, more Italians than Jews attended his funeral. Yes. Yeah. It was very much across ethnic association between the Sicilian mafia and the Jews. I mean, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky were very close friends from when they were young children and had an amazing rapport.
Q: Oh, how do we know that children didn’t lie?
A: Oh, I pass on that one, Monty. I can’t comment. Possibly they did. T
here’s a very interesting guy on Netflix called Myron Schulman, I think, something like that, or Byron Schulman. He was one of the sons of the gangsters, and he does the Jewish talk rounds in the United States, and he’s quite… Myron Sugerman, that’s his name, and he’s quite fun to listen to actually.
And to tunnel where the women gangsters during the… Oops, I’ve lost it. I’ve lost the questions. Hold on, what’s happened? Sorry. Take out there, no, we’ve got there, hold on. I’ve got past that bit. Sorry, I lost the place. Why do I keep losing the… Oh, I’ve lost it. What’s happened? Sorry.
Q&A. Hold on, let me go up a bit. Sorry everybody. That’s non-technological. Okay, hold on, let me get back to where I was.
Okay. Children dig down a tunnel. Okay. Okay, during prohibition period, the only way a person could legally obtain alcohol for personal use was on a federally monitored prescription with significant penalties for abuse. Huh! Physicians travelled around with their box of samples. Yes. Interestingly enough, and Alcoholics Anonymous wasn’t formed until 1935. And curiously enough, it was the committed alcoholics that actually fared worse during prohibition, but there was something that I read that said that you could actually get booze more easily during prohibition than outside of it.
Oh, Linda, this is interesting. My father was a member of the Minutemen in Newark, who under Longie with the cooperation of the police broke up Nazi Bund meetings. We didn’t learn of his involvement until 15 years after his death at 91 in a book about the Minutemen. Oh, wow! I’d like to talk about that. When Trudy gives me the opportunity to make the presentation, but it was really the gangs that did break up the Nazi Bund meetings. Very much so. And the Jewish community, as I did say, were very hesitant about actually sticking their necks out too far.
Oh, the question about whether Lansky left $300 million on his death. Yes, there’s a lot of confusion about that because the FBI were convinced that he did, but it seems that his son, the eldest of his sons was an invalid all his life. And it seems to be that if Lansky had the money, he would’ve looked after his son, and cared for him a little bit better than he actually did. He was very poorly taken care of, but apparently Lansky was owed so many debts by various members of both the mafia and the Jewish mafia that everybody was willing to bail him out when he needed help.
The Jewish gangsters worried they would encourage antisemitism. Well, that, I don’t know, that’s an interesting question. I really, I couldn’t say, that’s… The Argentinian Jewish gang called Zwi Migdal were notorious. Do you know them? Emil, we have given a lecture on the Zwi Migdal, and I don’t know whether it was before they were being recorded or not, but I actually gave a lecture on them. They weren’t bootleggers or gunrunners. Zwi Migdal was actually the head of a prostitution gang that brought young Jewish girls in from Eastern Europe as prostitutes to South America. There is a lecture on that. And when the web goes live, if it’s been recorded, you could get hold of it. I don’t know where you live in, Emil, but if you live in London, I’m giving a presentation at the Upper Berkeley Street… No, not on this. I’ve given them a presentation on that, but I’m sure you’ll find it somewhere.
In Las Vegas there’s a gangster museum. Well, there must have been. Yeah, Fat Sam, I don’t know. A Fat Sam and a moll called Tallulah possibly.
Oh, Richard, that’s very nice. Speaking as a Canadian, I’m sure that you are the only one who’d just say, sorry. I’m sure lots of people could say, Wishniak Cherry Brandy, yes.
Meyer Lansky’s wife’s son murdered somebody. Meyer’s wife wanted Meyer to help her son, he refused. Many of them hung out at The Forge Restaurant on Miami Beach. Yes, he retired down there. Dutch Schultz supposing he refused to make any on Sabbath. Hmm, that’s interesting. Boardwalk, yes. Boardwalk Empire does represent a lot of these characters, including the police chief, including the guy who ran it or…
What was his name? I can’t remember his name. Yes, very much so. Yes, it was quite fascinating, that Boardwalk Empire. Lansky lived on Collins Avenue, would walk his dog every day.
My daughter-in-law’s father supplied tuxedos to the waiter at The Forge. Oh, I love it. I love it. My mother said her father made wine for Kiddush when she was a kid during the prohibition. She said there was an exempt from, for religious reasons. Wow! Well, that’s obviously where my grandmother got it from because she did the same, but I’m not sure that she used that excuse. Okay.
Linda Silky asking me my maiden name. I’ll type. It’s my maiden name you wanted? Okay, there you go. I sent it privately, I think, I don’t know.
Okay. Nucky Thompson. Thank you, Neil. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I think I’ve got through most of them. Do I need… If anyone has anything else they’d like to say. My sound is coming through the webinar. Can I check my computer’s…? Is it too loud? Sorry.
You’re fine, Sandra.
Okay. Thank you everybody. I think I’ve got through most of it. I hope you enjoyed it, and I thank you for your attention. And thank you, Karina, for your help.