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

by Robert Rockaway

  Berman and his men charged through the door and began beating every Silvershirt within reach. The meeting turned into pandemonium, with the audience screaming and running for the exits followed by every Silvershirt still able to stand.

  The attack lasted ten minutes. When it was over, Berman, his suit covered with blood, took the microphone. “This is a warning,” he said in a cold controlled voice. ‘Anybody who says anything against Jews gets the same treatment. Only next time it will be worse.” He then took out a pistol and fired a shot into the air.

  After this, he and his men left the hall. It took two more such attacks to frighten off the Silvershirts. Berman and Blumenfeld paid off the police and there were never any arrests connected with the incident.34

  The Silvershirts and Nazi Bundists were also active on the West Coast, especially in Los Angeles. Although few in number, they were noisy and brazen and alarmed the city’s Jewish community. During the height of Nazi activity in the summer of 1938, Mickey Cohen happened to be serving a short sentence in the Los Angeles County jail. He was reading a newspaper in the bullpen (the barred enclosure where prisoners are kept temporarily), waiting to go to court, when Robert Noble, a notorious local Nazi Bundist, and another Nazi colleague were brought in for questioning. Cohen knew what Noble was and Noble knew who Cohen was. The police made the mistake of seating the anti-Semites near Mickey and leaving them alone.

  The two Nazis tried to move away but Cohen grabbed them before they could. “I started bouncing their heads together/’ relates Cohen. “With two of them, you’d think they’d put up a fight, but they didn’t do nothing.

  “So I’m going over them pretty good. The windup is that they’re climbing up on the bars, both of them, and I’m trying to pull them down. Now they’re screaming and hollering so much everybody thinks it’s a riot.

  “The jail chief at that time was a guy named Bright. So a riot call goes out, and Bright comes running down himself with a group of sheriffs. Bright’s all excited. He’s trying to open the bullpen door, but he can’t get in. These two guys are still up on the bars screaming about their rights and, ‘Why did ya throw us in with an animal, with a crazy man?’

  “By this time I’ve gone back to my corner and picked up the newspaper. So I’m reading when Bright finally gets the door open.

  “He comes over and says, ‘You son of a bitch, what happened now?’

  “I says, ‘What are you asking me for? I’m sitting here reading the newspaper. Them two guys got into a fight with each other. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t want to mix in with them.’

  “He says, ‘You’re a lying son of a bitch.’

  “Actually I didn’t know them at all except they were anti-Jew. But I sorted that one out, and boy, I felt so good about it.35

  “After this got heard about, I’d get calls from places like the Writer’s Guild to help with their problems with Nazi bastards. One time there was even a judge that called me about a German Nazi Bund meeting. I told him all right, don’t worry about it.”

  Cohen gathered together some of his Jewish mobster friends and raided the Nazi meeting. “So we went over there and grabbed everything in sight, all their bullshit signs, and smacked the shit out of them, broke them up as best we could.

  “Nobody could pay me for this work. It was my patriotic duty. There ain’t no amount of money to buy them kind of things,” said Mickey.36

  Perhaps the most famous gangster-Nazi story concerns Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. In 1938, Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, and Hermann Goring, head of Germany’s air force and Hitler’s designated successor, were visiting Mussolini and staying at the Rome villa of Count Carlo Di Frasso and his wife, Dorothy.

  Dorothy Di Frasso had met Siegel in Hollywood and the two were in the midst of a torrid affair. The countess brought Siegel to Rome at the same time the two Nazis were there. Siegel did not like what he had heard about Nazi anti-Semitism, and when he discovered that Hitler’s henchmen were nearby, he became livid. He announced his intention of liquidating them both.

  “You can’t do that!” protested the countess.

  Misunderstanding her concern, Siegel replied, “Sure I can. It’s an easy setup the way they’re walking around here.”

  Siegel abandoned his homicidal intentions when the countess pointed out that her husband would be held responsible. According to Siegel’s friends, the gangster always regretted not killing Goebbels and Goring when he had the chance.37

  Buried in the FBI archives is an even more startling story.38

  On March 29,1933, Homer Cummings, the Attorney General of the United States, received an intelligence report from Secretary of State Cordell Hull about an alleged threat by American Jews to assassinate Adolph Hitler.

  Six days earlier, the German Ambassador to Washington, Friedrich Wilhelm von Prittwitz-Gaffron, had received a letter from an individual by the name of David Stern, in which Stern warned that unless there was “an immediate and complete end of the persecution” of Jews, he would “go to Germany and assassinate Hitler. ”39

  Was Stern a crackpot? Was the letter a hoax? Given the well-publicized attacks and demonstrations against Jews that began as soon as Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January, a threat by an American Jew to kill him could not be discounted.

  Von Prittwitz asked the State Department to look into the matter. Hull quickly contacted the Attorney General and requested that he conduct an investigation and report back to him.40

  Any threat to assassinate a foreign dignitary — even outside the United States — had to be taken very seriously by American authorities. Not only were there grave international repercussions to conspiracies hatched in the United States against foreign leaders, but such plots could easily turn against an American leader. This had been dramatically demonstrated on February 15th in Miami, when an unemployed bricklayer named Giuseppe Zangara fired six bullets at President-elect Franklin Roosevelt. The bullets missed Roosevelt, but struck and killed Mayor Anton Cermack of Chicago who accompanied him. Zangara later told police that he purchased the pistol in Italy in order to kill King Emanuel. Then he changed his mind and went after Roosevelt.

  Zangara said that he did not hate Roosevelt personally. He hated all presidents, no matter what country they came from, and he hated all officials and everybody who was rich. Zangara was executed in the electric chair.

  Zangara was certainly unbalanced. But so might be the man who now threatened to kill Hitler. And he, too, might turn on an easier target — one closer to home. In addition, given the anger of American Jews toward the Nazis, any threat on Hitler’s life by a Jew had to be taken seriously.

  After Hull contacted him, Cummings called J. Edgar Hoover and asked him to find Daniel Stern and stop him. Hoover assigned one of his best agents, Dwight Brantley, to coordinate the national investigation. Brantley promptly alerted Division of Investigation field offices across the country to the news of the plot to kill the Fuhrer.41

  Throughout the remainder of the spring and summer, and into the fall of 1933, Hoover’s G-men searched for Daniel Stern. Their search led them from Washington to Chicago and then to Philadelphia, Detroit, Arizona and New York.

  One avenue that Hoover initially adopted in the hunt for Stern and any of his confederates was to question members of the Jewish underworld. If Stern was a professional killer and not just some kook, then he might be known to other Jewish mobsters such as Max Hoff in Philadelphia, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel and Lepke Buchalter in New York, and Longy Zwillman in Newark. They might, in some way, be connected with Stern, or they may have been approached by someone to do the job. If so, they could provide leads in the case.

  Agents in Philadelphia turned to Max Hoff for help. R.G. Harvey, the agent in charge of the Division’s Philadelphia office, interviewed Hoff and scores of his associates. They all claimed they had never heard of Daniel Stern or of any plot to kill Hitler, or any other Nazi for that matter. But almost all of them, Harvey reported, were i
mpressed by the plot and thought it was a great idea!

  G-men interviewed the German consul in Philadelphia and examined his files. The consul stated that he had not been advised of any plot to kill Hitler. He also said that, in all probability, the letter from Stern was written by “some crank, who is a sympathizer of the Jewish element.” He told agent Harvey that he was often “besieged by individuals who make threats upon him, but that they are all of the crank type and he dismisses them and pays no attention to them, as he does not consider their threats serious.”42 The most promising lead reached the Justice Department from a source in Tucson, Arizona. There, a man reported that, on the evening of May 19, 1933, he was in the San Carlos Hotel when he overheard a Yiddish-speaking group whom he described as “stout men in their fifties,” including a rabbi, discussing “a plan to murder Chancellor Hitler.” He immediately informed the German Embassy in Washington.

  According to this informant, the men initially talked about conditions in Germany and the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Then, “one of the speakers told the others that Hitler would not last long; that a number of Jews in New York were sending someone to Germany to assassinate Hitler.”43

  The FBI quickly dispatched agents from Los Angeles to Tucson. They interrogated everyone working in the hotel and combed the hotel registry for names. Every clue turned into a dead end.

  On August 19, 1933, Special Agent J.M. Keith sent a progress report regarding “Daniel Stern and the threat to assasinate German chancellor Hitler” to Hoover. Keith summarized the investigations in Philadelphia, Arizona, Detroit and New York and conceded that the Bureau had failed to locate Stern or to uncover any plot to kill Hitler. He concluded his report by saying that “this case has been reassigned and in the future will receive appropriate attention/’44

  Nothing more was done.

  Finally, on September 2, 1933, Acting Special Agent Dwight Brantley submitted his own final report to Hoover, writing that “all outstanding leads have been completed without any definite information having been obtained.” Accordingly, he wrote, “this case is closed.” Brantley assured Hoover that the case would be “reopened in the event further information is received by the German Chancellor.”45

  Was there really a plot hatched by someone to murder Hitler in early 1933?

  Daniel Stern was never found, nor could he be accurately described.

  More than fifty years later “Dutch,” a former New York mobster, recounted how, in the early spring of 1933, “someone respectable” had approached him about “bumping off” Hitler. He was asked to take the request to some of his “associates” who might show an interest in the undertaking. When he asked for more details on the project, Dutch was told that “there are people in Germany who are ready to assist us.”

  Dutch said he “talked to some of the boys about it. And they were willing to go to Germany to do the job.” They all spoke Yiddish, he said, and so believed they could get around any language problems in Germany. But before the contract could be formalized any further, “Hoover’s men started snooping around and asking questions.” “The boys” thought it wiser to drop the matter.

  Reflecting on the plot, Dutch concluded, “We shoulda done it.

  Too bad we didn’t do it. So many Jews woulda been saved. They woulda given us all medals. We woulda been heroes. Imagine.”46

  Just as gangsters were admired for their defense of their community so, too, were they honored for their philanthropy. The Jewish leadership averred it never took contributions from criminals. A prominent Chicago Jewish communal leader, Dr. S.S. Hollender, claimed that while he was general chairman of the Chicago United Jewish Appeal campaign in 1951, Jack Guzik “came to see me with $5000 in cash and I turned it down. We just didn’t want to take tainted money.”47

  Yet Jewish organizations and charities did accept gangster contributions, rarely inquiring as to the source of the money; neither did they discriminate among donors. Meyer Lansky donated large sums of money to his synagogue, Temple Sinai in Hollywood, Florida; to Brandeis University; and to causes related to Israel.

  Shepard Broad, one of Miami Beach’s most eminent Jewish activists, remembers that when it came to Israel, “You did not have to ask Meyer Lansky twice. Not like some. He was always waiting for me in the lobby with a check.”48

  In his later years, Moe Dalitz also became something of a philanthropist whose contributions were accepted by one and all. At a dinner in Las Vegas in 1970, Moe received the City of Peace Award of the State of Israel, “in recognition of distinguished service to the people and the State of Israel.” The governor of Nevada, United States senators, judges and other public officials attended the event. Six years later the American Cancer Research Center acknowledged Moe’s support by presenting him with its “Humanitarian Award.” And in 1985, the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith, a national Jewish defense and human rights organization, awarded Moe its Torch of Liberty award in “deep appreciation” of his financial contributions over the years.49

  Moe Sedway, a former associate of Bugsy Siegel and one of Dalitz’s Las Vegas partners, revealed to the Kefauver Committee that he had served as chairman of the Nevada United Jewish Appeal in 1947.50

  When Jake Guzik died, Rabbi Noah Ganze of the Chicago Loop Synagogue eulogized him as a man who had generously helped hundreds of people. “His charities were performed quietly,” said Ganze. “And he made frequent and vast contributions to my congregation.”51

  In Newark, New Jersey, Longy Zwillman’s generosity was legendary. He provided needy Jews with food during the Jewish holidays and distributed truckloads of food and toys to the Christian community every Thanksgiving and Christmas. One of Zwillman’s friends estimated that it cost Longy about $10,000 for Thanksgiving and as much as $15,000 for Christmas.52

  During the Depression, Longy contributed $ 1,000 per week to a soup kitchen established by the city’s Catholic diocese in the basement of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Mulberry Street. The sign over the entrance proclaimed, ‘All needy regardless of race or creed are welcome to the free dinners served here every day from 11 A.M. to 2 PM.”53

  When word leaked out that the soup kitchen’s benefactor was a notorious gangster, some Catholic laymen demanded an explanation. One of them approached the city’s archbishop, the Reverend Thomas J. Walsh and complained about the soup kitchen receiving “sinful” money. The archbishop replied that “$50,000 of that money is blessed.”54

  Longy also financed the college education of young people in Newark, New York, Cleveland and Chicago, even sending a number of them through medical and law school. Two of the young men were the sons of waiters at Toots Shor’s restaurant in New York. Shor was a friend of Zwillman’s and Longy often ate at his restaurant when he came to New York.

  A list of Longy’s charitable contributions was presented to the court during his trial for income tax evasion. In 1947-1948, Zwillman donated money to the United Jewish Appeal, the Newark News Christmas fund for the needy, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the National Probation Association, the Catholic Actor’s Guild, Congregation Beth Torah, Sinai Congregation, the Newark Welfare Federation, the Policeman’s Benevolent Association and the East Orange General Hospital.55

  Most of the time, Zwillman gave his aid directly to the individuals or charitable organizations. Sometimes, however, he proffered his charity in strange ways. One year, for example, between the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement, Zwillman invited Rabbi Isaac Unterman of Jersey City to his office.

  Unterman was nervous because he did not know what Zwillman wanted. When they met, Zwillman said, “Rabbi, I understand you’re the only honest man in the Jewish community. It’s before Yom Kippur, so here’s $50,000. Give it to any charity you want.’’ Whereupon he handed Unterman $50,000 in cash.56

  Philanthropic activity by mobsters and its acceptance, even solicitation by the legitimate community, was not a phenomenon unique to Jews. Italian Mafia figures also contributed to charity. Mafia bos
ses made regular donations to their local Catholic parish and their children’s private schools, and their contributions were made openly, with no attempt at secrecy. The Catholic Church and Catholic charities were aware of where the money came from and they displayed no qualms about accepting it.

  In 1949, Frank Costello held a $100-a-plate dinner for the Salvation Army at the Copacabana nightclub in New York, a gala event attended by mob Figures, churchmen and judges. Joe Bonanno, the head of one of New York’s five leading crime families, boasted that he belonged to innumerable civic and charitable organizations. “I am a life member of the Elks, as well as a perpetual member of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith,” he said. Tm a member of the Knights of Columbus… I’ve contributed to St. Mary’s Hospital. I can’t begin to count the money I’ve donated to the Roman Catholic archdiocese in Tucson.”57

  Thus in both the Jewish and Italian communities, occasions arose when underworld figures became acceptable.

  Commenting on this aspect of Jewish communal life, one underworld figure declared that “There was never once, when I gave tsedakah [charity] that somebody said to me, ‘From whence comes this source of money?’ Never once did anybody ever say that. And everybody knows who I am.”58

  Jewish gangsters also assisted in the creation of the State of Israel by providing much needed aid in its war against the Arabs. After the Holocaust, Zionists viewed the establishment of a Jewish state as a matter of life or death. This led them to solicit and accept help from any and every quarter.

  In 1945, the Jewish Agency, the pre-state Israeli government headed by David Ben-Gurion, established a clandestine arms purchasing and smuggling network throughout the United States. The operation was placed under the aegis of the Haganah, the underground forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces, and involved

  Isidore (Kid Cann) Blumenfeld

  American Jews and non-Jews from every walk of life, including the Jewish underworld.59