[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 17:32:16 -0800 (PST)
Fascinating. Thanks for this Debby. I know my husband will be interested in
reading the book. and I, too.
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
Books Being Scanned List:
https://wiki.benetech.org/display/BSO/Books+Being+Scanned+List
--- On Sun, 2/14/10, Debby Franson <the.bee@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: Debby Franson <the.bee@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [bksvol-discuss] But they were good to their mothers In-reply-to:
> <75a7.f3030b3.3899d129@xxxxxxx>
> To: "bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Sunday, February 14, 2010, 4:58 PM
> 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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