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)

My Amazon Review of Michael Shnayerson's : Bugsy: The Dark Side of the American Dream"

 

The Rise and Fall of Bugsy Siegel

 

Michael Shnayerson tells the story of how a Jewish eastside kid under the tutelage of legendary mobster Arnold Rothstein rose to be among the top bootleggers in the 1920’s. By 1930 Bugsy Siegel along with Lucky Luciano and his boyhood friend Meyer Lansky became the triumvirate of organized crime. Siegel was instrumental in the formation of Murder Inc. and along the way he paid for his brother’s medical school training. Siegel was hands on in murder, rapes and robberies, a true gangster.

 

He moved from New York City to Los Angeles and with the aid former gangster and now actor George Raft, Siegel become the toast of Hollywood. His Hollywood good looks certainly didn’t hurt. Just as Hollywood found fascination with the radical left in the 1960’s, in the 1930’s Hollywood was enamored with the gangster in their midst. Remember that Warren Beatty played him in the movie, “Bugsy.” Meantime his wife and two daughters were living in the toney Scarsdale suburb of New York City.

 

Shnayerson offers up his belief as to why the Jewish gangsters were far more sensitive to the rise of Nazism in Germany than the Jewish community as a whole. His explanation is that the gangsters knew how violent people can be.

 

Although Siegel get all of the credit for the creation of postwar Las Vegas, much of the credit goes to his partner Billy Wilkerson, publisher of the Hollywood Reporter and nightclub impresario. Siegel took over Wilkerson’s Flamingo project, which was to become the first modern Las Vegas hotel/casino. However, the problem was that Siegel was a horrible construction boss and the project suffered from huge cost over runs that were funded by the Mob. When the Mob suspects Siegel and his girlfriend Virginia Hill from skimming their money, at a Havana meeting in 1946 Luciano and Lansky order up a hit on their one-time buddy.

 

The hit was accomplished in June 1947, a crime that was never solved. Shnayerson offers up his theory as to who actually did it.  This is a fast-paced book well worth the read. I only wish he spent more time on Mickey Cohen, Siegel’s longtime Los Angeles accomplice.

For the full Amazon URL see: The Rise and Fall of Bugsy Siegel (amazon.com)