[bksvol-discuss] Re: But they were good to their mothers In-reply-to: <75a7.f3030b3.3899d129@xxxxxxx>
- From: Cindy <popularplace@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:32:06 -0800 (PST)
I'd proof it eventually, but I have 3 to do first. I'd do it before the 4th in
my pile
Cindy
Wish List (i.e., books wanted added to the collection) and books-being-scanned
list available at sites below
Wish List: https://wiki.benetech.org/display/BSO/Bookshare+Wish+List
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--- On Sun, 2/14/10, Larry Lumpkin <llumpkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: Larry Lumpkin <llumpkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: But they were good to their mothers
> In-reply-to: <75a7.f3030b3.3899d129@xxxxxxx>
> To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Date: Sunday, February 14, 2010, 6:07 PM
> Hi Debbie. I did a
> look-up on amazon and found this title:
>
> But He Was Good to His Mother : The Lives and Crimes of
> Jewish Gangsters
> (Paperback)
>
>
> Is this the book in question? I might buy it and scan
> it if anyone wants to
> proof it.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> On Behalf Of Debby Franson
> Sent: Sunday, February 14, 2010 6:58 PM
> To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [bksvol-discuss] But they were good to their
> mothers In-reply-to:
> <75a7.f3030b3.3899d129@xxxxxxx>
>
> Hi everyone!
>
> A friend sent this to me. Here is some history, and
> the subject line is the
> title of a book.
>
> But they were good to their mothers !!!!!!
>
>
>
>
>
> This is a side of Jewish history you may have
> missed.
>
> There are few excuses for the behavior of
> Jewish gangsters in the 1920s
> and 1930s. The best known Jewish gangsters - Meyer
> Lansky, Bugsy Siegel,
> Longy Zwillman, Moe Dalitz, David Berman- were
> involved in the numbers
> rackets, illegal drug dealing, prostitution, gambling
> and loan sharking.
> They were not nice men.
>
> During the rise of American Nazism in the
> 1930s and when Israel was
> being founded between 1945 and 1948, however, they
> proved staunch defenders
> of the Jewish people.
>
>
> The roots of Jewish gangsterism lay in
> the ethnic neighborhoods of the
> Lower East Side; Brownsville,// //Brooklyn//; Maxwell
> Street in Chicago;
> and Boyle Heights in Los Angeles. Like other newly
> arrived groups in
> American history, a few Jews who considered
> themselves blocked from
> respectable professions used crime as a means to
> "make good" economically.
> The market for vice flourished during Prohibition and
> Jews joined with
> others to exploit the artificial market created by
> the legal bans on
> alcohol, gambling, paid sex and narcotics.
>
> Few of these men were religiously
> observant. They rarely attended
> services, although they did support congregations
> financially. They did not
> keep kosher or send their children to day schools.
> However, at crucial
> moments they protected other Jews, in America and
> around the world.
>
> The 1930s were a period of rampant
> anti-Semitism in America,
> particularly in the Midwest. Father Charles Coughlin,
> the Radio Priest in
> Detroit, and William Pelley of Minneapolis, among
> others, openly called for
> Jews to be driven from positions of responsibility,
> if not from the country
> itself.
>
> Organized Brown Shirts in New York and
> Silver Shirts in Minneapolis
> outraged and terrorized American Jewry. While the
> older and more
> respectable Jewish organizations pondered a response
> that would not
> alienate non-Jewish supporters, others - including a
> few rabbis -asked the
> gangsters to break up American Nazi rallies.
>
> Historian Robert Rockaway writing in the
> journal of the American Jewish
> Historical Society, notes that German-American Bund
> rallies in the New York
> City area posed a dilemma for mainstream Jewish
> leaders. They wanted the
> rallies stopped, but had no legal grounds on which to
> do so. New York State
> Judge Nathan Perlman personally contacted Meyer
> Lansky to ask him to
> disrupt the Bund rallies, with the proviso that
> Lansky's henchmen stop
> short of killing any Bundists. Enthusiastic for the
> assignment, if
> disappointed by the restraints, Lansky accepted all
> of Perlman's terms
> except one: he would take no money for the
> work. Lansky later observed, "I
> was a Jew and felt for those Jews in Europe who were
> suffering. They were
> my brothers."
>
> For months, Lansky's workmen effectively
> broke up one Nazi rally after
> another. As Rockaway notes, "Nazi arms, legs and ribs
> were broken and
> skulls were cracked, but no one died."
>
> Lansky recalled breaking up a Brown Shirt
> rally in the Yorkville section
> of Manhattan: "The stage was decorated with a
> swastika and a picture of
> Hitler. The speakers started ranting. There were only
> fifteen of us, but we
> went into action. We threw some of them out the
> windows. . .
> . Most of the Nazis panicked and ran out. We chased
> them and beat them
> up... We wanted to show them that Jews would not
> always sit back and accept
> insults."
>
> In Minneapolis, William Dudley Pelley
> organized a Silver Shirt Legion to
> "rescue" America from an imaginary Jewish-Communist
> conspiracy. In Pelle's
> own words, just as "Mussolini and his Black Shirts
> saved Italy and as
> Hitler and his Brown Shirts saved Germany," he would
> save America from
> Jewish communists. Minneapolis gambling czar David
> Berman confronted
> Pelley's Silver Shirts on behalf of the Minneapolis
> Jewish community.
>
> Berman learned that Silver Shirts were
> mounting a rally at Lodge. When
> the Nazi leader called for all the "Jew bastards" in
> the city to be
> expelled, or worse, Berman and his associates burst
> in to the room and
> started cracking heads. After ten minutes, they had
> emptied the hall. His
> suit covered in blood, Berman took the
> microphone and announced, "This is
> a warning. Anybody who says anything against Jews
> gets the same treatment.
> Only next time it will be worse." After Berman broke
> up two more rallies,
> there were no more public Silver Shirt meetings
> in Minneapolis.
>
> Jewish gangsters also helped establish
> Israel after the war. One famous
> example is a meeting between Bugsy Siegel and Reuven
> Dafne, a Haganah
> emissary, in 1945. Dafne was seeking funds and guns
> to help liberate
> Palestine from British rule. A mutual friend arranged
> for the two men to
> meet.
>
> "You mean to tell me Jews are fighting?"
> Siegel asked "You mean fighting
> as in killing?" Dafne answered in the affirmative.
>
> Siegel replied, "I'm with you."
>
> For weeks, Dafne received suitcases
> filled with $5 and $10 bills --
> $50,000 in all -- from Siegel.
>
> No one should paint gangsters as heroes.
> They committed acts of great
> evil. But historian Rockaway has presented a textured
> version of Jewish
> gangster history in a book ironically titled, "But
> They Were Good to their
> Mothers."
>
> Some have observed that, despite their
> disreputable behavior, they could
> be good to their people, too. A little interesting
> bit of Jewish history.
>
>
> Debby
>
> --
> mailto:<the.bee@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> --
> Enjoy what you have rather than desiring what you don't
> have. Just dreaming
> about nice things is meaningless; it is like chasing the
> wind.--Ecclesiastes
> 6:9 NLT
>
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