My Amazon Review of Michael Benson's "Gangsters vs. Nazis"

 

The Jewish Gangster Army

 

In the late 1930’s Nazism was on the rise, even in America. There were two very active Nazi groups, the German American Bund and the Silver Legion who spewed out Hitler’s hateful rhetoric. Alarmed by the growing Nazi menace New York Judge and former congressman Nathan Perlman calls the gangster Meyer Lansky to ask for help. As evil as the Mob was, sometimes the Lord works in mysterious ways. This is where Michael Benson’s story begins.

 

Yes, Perlman was a judge, and it seems that he had every major Jewish gangster in America on speed dial, to use an anachronism. How a sitting judge had such access one can only speculate, but given his closeness to the Mob, it wouldn’t be surprising if he were on their payroll. Benson is silent on this issue.

 

What Perlman asks of his literal murderers’ row of gangsters is to directly take on the Nazis and break up their rallies. These would include the aforementioned Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Leo “Lepke” Buchhalter, Longy Zwillman, Moe Dalitz, and Mickey Cohen. He was indifferent to the fact that most of their rallies were lawful. Nevertheless in New York, Newark, Chicago, Minneapolis, Cleveland, and Los Angeles the mob breaks up Nazi rallies with brass knuckles, baseball bats, pipes, stink bombs, and sawed-off pool cues. Also in the mix was the famed Jewish boxer, Barney Ross. Although quite illegal and certainly offensive to civil liberties sensitivities, it showed the world that Jews were no longer the cowering masses of the shtetl, but they actually could fight. This would be proven out in the resistance to the Nazis in occupied Europe and the in the nascent Jewish army in Palestine.

 

One interesting sidelight that Benson points out is that one of the Chicago mobsters was a man named Sparky Rubinstein. He would later turn up 25 years later as the Jack Ruby who assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald. Part of the antisemitic milieu of the 1930’s the radio priest Charles Coughlan. His publication was called “Social Justice.” This is a real irony for me in that social justice has become the new religion in much of America’s Jewish community.

 

With antisemitism on the rise today on both the Left and the Right, Benson asks who will defend the Jewish community today?  My criticism of the book is that sometimes it gets too detailed and is too pedantic, but it is still a great story.

For the full Amazon URL see: The Jewish Gangster Army (amazon.com)