[bksvol-discuss] Re: But they were good to their mothers In-reply-to: <75a7.f3030b3.3899d129@xxxxxxx>
- From: "Larry Lumpkin" <llumpkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:07:59 -0600
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
--
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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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