But He Was Good to His Mother - The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters

by Robert Rockaway

  At Zelig’s demise from an assassin’s bullet in October 1912, thousands of people gathered at his house to get a glimpse of the coffin and to pay their final respects.

  “The streets all around Broome Street were jammed,’’ wrote Shoenfeld. ‘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.’’

  Fifty years after Zelig’s death, historian Arthur Goren asked Judge Jonah Goldstein, who had been a young lawyer at the time and involved in local politics, why so many Jews attended Zelig’s funeral. Did the East Side look upon Zelig as a hero, Goren asked. The judge replied that “going to Coney Island, you take the street car at the Brooklyn Bridge. Jack Zelig and a couple of his thugs would hire some Jews with beards to ride on the open trolley cars. Then some good-for-nothing loafers would come along and pull the Jews’ beards. They’d give it to those who pulled the beards. They didn’t want a Jew’s beard pulled. They had never been educated in Hebrew, didn’t go to shul [synagogue], but they weren’t going to have a Jew tossed around because he was a Jew. They made it possible for the Jews not to get tossed around.”10

  As a youngster, Abner “Longy” Zwillman earned the gratitude of local Jewish peddlers because he and his gang, the “Happy Ramblers,” defended them from assaults by Irish thugs. Old-time Jewish residents of Newark still recall that whenever the Irish came into the Jewish district to create trouble, the cry “Ruff der Langer” (“Call the tall one”) went up. And quick as a flash, Zwillman and his pals would stop whatever they were doing and rush to help. As a result, Longy acquired a reputation for assisting Jews that remained with him all his life.11

  One of Zwillman’s most loyal lieutenants, Max “Puddy” Hinkes, protected elderly Jews when he was a young man. A friend of Puddy’s remembers him as “a tough kid who liked to fight. He was a prizefighter and he had a mean streak.

  “When the goyim, particularly the Irish toughs, would come into the Prince Street area, where the Jews congregated in Newark, and they would beat up elderly Jews or belittle them and pull their beards, the old Jews would holler for Puddy. And Puddy provided physical protection for these old-timers. It was Puddy’s great pleasure to take a stick and beat a bunch of guys and break heads. He loved a good fight.

  “Puddy came from a good Jewish home. His mother was president of the synagogue sisterhood. Puddy was devoted to his parents and he would never allow anyone to badmouth Jews.

  “Once he was at the fights in Laurel Gardens on Springfield Avenue in Newark, and some local Jewish kid was fighting that night. Somebody sitting in front of Puddy kept hollering ‘Hit that Jew, kill ‘em.’

  “Puddy was smoking a Havana cigar and was rather reluctant to use it for purposes other than personal enjoyment. However, he finally made the supreme sacrifice of his personal pleasure. He tapped the guy in front of him on the shoulder. When the guy turned around to see who was tapping him, Puddy stuck the lit cigar right in his eye, badly injuring the man. Although his enjoyment of the cigar was ruined, Puddy got pleasure from hurting the anti-Semite.”12

  Another Zwillman associate, Hymie Kugel, would also tolerate no slurs against Jews. Though a small man, standing only five feet two inches, Hymie was fast, tough as nails and afraid of no one. They called him “the Weasel.” His son Jerry knew with whom his father associated, but still loved and admired him, especially because Hymie would tolerate no slurs against the Jews.

  Itzik Goldstein remembers one time he and Hymie happened to be in the Ideal Restaurant, when “three Pollacks came in and ordered meat. They were making a party. They started to abuse the owner, Izzy the Chink. ‘You Jew bastard/ they said.

  “Hymie came out. He went upstairs. I happened to be sitting in the front reading the paper. This is maybe twelve, one o’clock, maybe later,” recalls Itzik.

  “Hymie went over by the stove and he took the top of the stove, that plate that goes on top of the stove. He says to me, ‘Grab something.’

  “So I grab a celery tonic bottle.

  “‘You don’t do nothing until they come outside,’ he says.

  “So I see he goes inside and he’s talking to these guys, moving his hands. Finally Hymie and the three Pollacks walk out.

  “So he says, ‘Listen, Sonny, they don’t serve meat in there. This is ajewish restaurant. So why don’t you fellas be nice and go home.’

  “While he’s talking to them he takes the steel plate and hits a guy across the face. And I hit one of the guys with the bottle. One of the guys ran down the street. And these two guys are laid out right in front of the restaurant.

  “So Hymie and I ran upstairs of the Old Vienna. We went up on the second floor. So we’re looking out the window and the guy that ran away comes back.

  “In the meantime, Chink called the police. They came down with the patrol wagon and locked the three of them up. They picked up the two guys that were beat up and the guy that ran down the street.

  “Before he got in the wagon, I heard him say ‘they went upstairs there.’

  “We hid. The cop comes up looks around. ‘Nobody up there,’ he says.

  “Before they put this guy in the patrol wagon, he went to lock his car.

  “Hymie says, ‘Ooh, he’s got a car here.’

  “Well what Hymie did to that car. He got a meat cleaver and he jumped on the hood. He put holes in that car.’’

  Hymie’s son remembers the time his father, his sister, his mother and his mother’s sister and husband went to eat at Child’s Restaurant on Market Street. “It was raining. We come in and we had umbrellas. You know, when you put in an umbrella, you shake it out,” he says.

  “Some guy’s paying the tab, and my aunt accidentally shook her umbrella all over this guy. She apologized.

  “This guy says, These Jews, they don’t know their place.’ And he’s rattling off.

  ‘At each cashier’s desk there used to be a big ashtray. My father picks up the ashtray and smashes the guy in the face with it. He destroyed him. Knocked his tooth out.

  “The place had revolving doors. And my dad runs out, waits a couple of minutes, and then comes back in. Like he doesn’t know anything.

  “He says, ‘What happened?’ He was cute. He said, ‘What happened here?’

  “Then he helps the guy up!”

  “I loved my dad. He was quite a guy.”13

  Among Jewish youngsters growing up in the ghettos, respect for the gangster as a tough and fearless protector of his ethnic group became something akin to idolization. Television talk-show host Larry King admitted that when he was a boy in New York, “Jewish gangsters were our heroes…. Even the bad ones were heroes to us.”14

  Chicago Jewish mobster Davey Miller recognized the source of this adulation. He and his three brothers, Herschel, Max and Harry, ran a family business of slugging, thieving, extortion and bootlegging. They held one of the biggest gambling concessions in Chicago during the early 1920s. It embraced the entire length of Roosevelt Road, which contained the greatest concentration of Jewish merchants in the city. Chicago’s corrupt mayor, William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson, sold it to them.15

  But the Miller gang had another side: that of defending Jews against anti-Semites. Davey once explained his role in this to a reporter. “What I have done from the time I was a boy was to fight for my people here in the ghetto against Irish, Poles, or any other nationality,” he said. “It was sidewalk fighting at first. I could lick any five boys or men in a sidewalk free-for-all.

  “Maybe I am a hero to the young folks among my people, but it’s not because I’m a gangster,” he said. “It’s because I’ve always been ready to help all or any of them in a pinch.”16

  The sense of obligation to protect the Jewish community led some Jewi
sh mobsters to fight against American Nazis and their sympathizers during the 1930s. The Great Depression and the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Europe spurred an increase in anti-Semitism in the United States. The violent and hate-filled rantings of men like Detroit radio priest Father Charles E. Coughlin; the quasi-fascist fundamentalist Protestant preacher Gerald Winrod; and the head of the German-American Bund (referred to as the Nazi Bund), Fritz Kuhn, worried American Jewish leaders, but they were uncertain how to respond.

  Concerned about “what the gentiles thought” and fearful of stirring up even more anti-Jewish sentiment, the American Jewish establishment’s response was often tentative and disorganized. One group of American Jews which did not trouble themselves about what the gentiles thought and had no compunctions about meeting the anti-Semites head-on were Jewish gangsters.

  Nazi Bund rallies in New York during the late 1930s created a terrible dilemma for the city’s Jewish leaders. They wanted the meetings stopped, but could not do so legally. Nathan Perlman, a New York judge and former Republican congressman, was one Jewish leader who believed that Jews “have to demonstrate a little more militancy.”17

  Perlman surreptitiously contacted Meyer Lansky and asked him to help. He assured Lansky that money and legal assistance would be put at his disposal. The only stipulation was that no Nazi Bundists were to be killed. Beaten up, yes. Terminated, no. Lansky reluctantly agreed. No killing.18

  Always very sensitive about anti-Semitism, Lansky was acutely aware of what the Nazis were doing. “I was a Jew and I felt for those Jews in Europe who were suffering,” he said. “They were my brothers.”19

  Lansky refused the judge’s offer of money and assistance, but he did make one request. He asked Perlman to insure that he would not be criticized by the Jewish press after he went into action. The judge promised to do what he could.

  Lansky rounded up some of his friends and members of Brooklyn’s Murder, Inc. mob, and went about New York disrupting pro-Nazi meetings. Young Jews not associated with him or the rackets also volunteered to help, and Lansky and others taught them how to use their fists and handle themselves in a fight.

  Lansky’s crews worked very professionally. Nazi arms, legs and ribs were broken and skulls were cracked, but no one died. The attacks continued for more than a year.20

  Judd Teller, a reporter for a Yiddish daily newspaper, characterized one of the actions in New York’s Yorkville, the center of pro-Nazi sympathy, as a miniature reenactment “of the night when God struck all the firstborn in Egypt.” According to Teller, some gangsters infiltrated the meeting while others waited outside. At a prearranged time, the men inside the hall bounded from their seats and charged the speakers, while their confederates outside rushed the sentries guarding the door and burst inside. A third group of invaders climbed the fire escapes and clambered through the windows.

  The mobsters worked expertly and swiftly, and it was all over in a matter of minutes. There were no fatalities and no permanent injuries, only dislocated limbs, bloodied heads and noses, and damage requiring dental work. “Like commandos, they were gone before the police arrived,” writes Teller.21

  Years later, Lansky recounted one of the onslaughts in Yorkville to Israeli journalist Uri Dann. “We got there in the evening and found several hundred people dressed in their brown shirts,” he said. “The stage was decorated with a swastika and pictures of Hitler. The speakers started ranting. There were only fifteen of us, but we went into action.

  “We attacked them in the hall and threw some of them out the windows. There were fistfights all over the place. Most of the Nazis panicked and ran out. We chased them and beat them up, and some of them were out of action for months.

  “We wanted to teach them a lesson,” Lansky said. “We wanted to show them that Jews would not always sit back and accept insults.”22

  For months afterward, whenever the Nazis held rallies, they demanded police protection. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, whose mother was Jewish and who spoke Yiddish, complied with their request. To ensure the Nazis’ safety, he confined the Bundist parades and rallies to Yorkville and forbad them to wear their uniforms or sing their songs. As an additional measure, he sent Jewish and black policemen to guard their meetings.23

  Reflecting on his role in these episodes many years later, Lansky fumed that though he helped the Jewish community, all he got for his trouble was abuse. He believed the city’s Jewish leaders were pleased with the actions, but they failed to stop the Jewish press from condemning him. When the press reported the anti-Bund incidents, they referred to Lansky and his friends as “the Jewish gangsters.” This infuriated Lansky.

  “They wanted the Nazis taken care of but were afraid to do the job themselves,” he said. “I did it for them. And when it was over they called me a gangster. No one ever called me a gangster until Rabbi Wise (Stephen Wise) and the Jewish leaders called me that.”24

  Lansky never forgot the slight.

  The Nazi Bund was also active across the river in New Jersey, especially in Newark which had a large German-American community. As a Jew, Longy Zwillman was not about to allow the Nazis to operate with impunity. He delegated Puddy Hinkes to handle the problem.

  In 1938, with Zwillman’s encouragement, Hinkes joined a group of Newark Jews who called themselves the “Minutemen,” borrowing the name from the Minutemen of Revolutionary War fame. The original Minutemen were members of the farmer-militia in Massachusetts who fought the British at Lexington in 1775. They were named Minutemen because they were expected to be ready to fight at a minute’s notice.

  Newark’s Jewish Minutemen had been organized by a Jewish ex-prizefighter by the name of Nat Arno. They saw to it that no Nazi Bund meetings were held in the New Jersey area, particularly in Newark and the small towns surrounding it. Arno and his men monitored the movement of the Nazis and, finding out where their meetings were held, broke them up.

  Arno received financial and political support in these forays from Longy Zwillman. In those days, Zwillman controlled Newark’s police and government. Whenever the Bund met, the police informed Longy of the time and place and conveniently abandoned their posts so that the Nazis were left unguarded.25

  The Minutemen’s most famous exploit occurred at Schwabben Hall on Springfield Avenue, bordering the German neighborhood in Irvington. According to Hinkes, “The Nazi scumbags were meeting one night on the second floor. Nat Arno and I went upstairs and threw stink bombs into the room where the creeps were.

  ‘As they came out of the room, running from the horrible odor of the stink bombs and running down the steps to go into the street to escape, our boys were waiting with bats and iron bars. It was like running a gauntlet. Our boys were lined up on both sides and we started hitting, aiming for their heads or any other part of their bodies, with our bats and irons.

  “The Nazis were screaming blue murder. This was one of the most happy moments of my life. It was too bad we didn’t kill them all.

  “In other places we couldn’t get inside, so we smashed windows and destroyed their cars, which were parked outside. The Nazis begged for police help and protection; however, the police favored us.”26

  Heshey Weiner, another participant in the fracas, remembers that one of the Nazis, who came running down the stairs, had the indiscretion to shout “Heil” and was met with a chorus of lead pipes. Heshey claims that after this attack, he “never heard any more of Bund meetings by the Nazis in our area.”27

  In 1992, in recognition of these actions, the Synagogue of the Suburban Torah Center in Livingston, New Jersey, sponsored a dinner to honor Hinkes as a man who “wreaked havoc and destruction” on those “that would wish to do harm to Jewish lives.”28

  In Chicago, blond, blue-eyed Herb Brin, who worked as a crime reporter for the City Press, joined the local Nazi party as a spy for the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith. “I joined the Nazi party at the Hausfaterland, on Western Avenue across from Riverview Park. It was a hotbed of Nazi activity,” he recalls.29<
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  From 1938 through 1939, he kept the ADL informed about Nazi activities. What the ADL did not know was that Brin also fed information about Nazi marches and rallies to Jewish gangsters.

  “I marched with the Nazis,” recalls Brin, “but I came back later with Jewish gangs and we beat them up good.”30

  Minneapolis, Minnesota was also a hotbed of anti-Semitism during the 1930s, only here, the problem was William Dudley Pelley’s pro-Nazi Silvershirt Legion. A California native, Pelley was a former screen writer, crime reporter, novelist and magazine journalist. He hated President Roosevelt and wanted to rescue America from an international Jewish-Communist conspiracy. Pelley created his Silvershirts, he said, to “save America as Mussolini and his Blackshirts saved Italy and as Hitler and his Brownshirts saved Germany.”31

  Minneapolis had a long history of anti-Semitism and was one of the few American cities to successfully bar Jews from the service clubs (Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions) and civic welfare organizations. Because of Minneapolis’ anti-Jewish tradition, Pelley felt it would be easy to gain a foothold there.32

  At the time, the city’s gambling czar was Davie Berman, an associate and sometimes rival of Isidore Blumenfeld. Berman despised anti-Semites and determined to destroy the Silvershirts. He found out where they met and prepared his men for a raid.

  One evening the call came to Berman’s bookmaking operation at the Radisson Hotel. “Tonight there’s a Silvershirt meeting at the Elk’s Lodge at eight PM.,” said the caller.33

  Berman immediately called his men. “Be at the office at seven PM. and bring anybody and everything you’ve got,” he said.

  When his men arrived, Berman distributed brass knuckles and clubs. He and his men then drove in a convoy of Cadillacs to the Elk’s Lodge and waited for the right moment to attack.

  The hall inside was decorated with Nazi banners and portraits of Hitler, and the crowd waited expectantly for the meeting to begin. As soon as the Silvershirt leader mounted the podium and began shouting for an end to “all the Jew bastards in this city/’ Berman’s lookout signaled to him.