True crimes ‘zine The Snitch has posted an excellent bio of Jewish gangster Meyer “The Brain” Lansky. The mastermind who helped another Jewish gangster, Bugsy Seigel, build Las Vegas to clean the mob’s filthy millions, Lansky always kept it low-pro and only pulled one 90-day jail term in 60 years of racketeering. Yeah, we know crime is bad, but we’re still proud to claim this cat who makes Tony Soprano look like the fat, stupid, fictional hack he is.
More Jewish Six Degrees: Our grandma, who worked at a bank in Miami Beach in 70’s, was Lansky’s favorite teller. She always said he was a perfect mensch, no matter what anyone said about him.
Yo, Yenta!
From the edge of the Diaspora rises a new generation of Jewish mother
The picture above is not Meyer. It is a picture of Lepke. Meyer and Ben had their own organization but did work occasionally for Lepke.
Later, Meyer signed off on the hit on Ben in 1947 because Ben was borrowing, spending and losing too much of The Combination’s money without paying back.
My Uncle Mendy also worked for Lepke and along with Charlie Workman took The Dutchman and his troop at the Newark Palace Chophouse in October of 1935. Great piece of work, two against four or five.
My dad worked for Frank Costello in the 1950’s. I remember my Dad coming home all agitated the day Frank was shot.
Don’t let anyone ever tell you that Jews have always been shopkeepers, accountants and businessmen. My Dad and Uncle were very tough men and excellent marksmen in their day.
Sincerely, Steve Weiss.
I would love to know more about your father and uncle. From what info I can get from my family members, my Grandfather was a gangster at that time. My father has passed away and I think I can get some details from my uncle, but it is still painful for them because they felt ostracized from the Jewish community. He was gone a lot. They were from Vermont. My grandfather, Big Jake Levine, was a rum runner, smuggled chinese from Canada and was an enforcer. He wouldn’t have worked on his own. Who do you think he worked with? I am a writer. I would to get more stories of these men before they are gone.
Does anyone know of a Jewish gangster named
Morris J. Berman, or Mordecai J Berman. He was borh in 1925 and was in the construction business.
Deb
actually, if it wasn’t for ITALIAN mobsters like Frank Costello or Charlie Luciano, this jewish prick would still be getting his ass kicked by the irish, and buying shit out of a store with 50% off sale. Watch the movie “mobsters” before you start pulling shit out of your ass. The jews were NEVER more powerful than the italians. by the way “the sopranos” is based on a real crime family, the DeCavalcante crime family, so isn’t entirely fictional.
The pride you exhibit that your ancestors were “tough men”, “gangsters”, “laundered money”, otherwise known as thieves and murderers very surprising to me. How much of this has carried into the BOARDROOM!
Actually your wrong about ” there was no such thing as the Jewish Mafia” for this reason:
During the late 1940s -1960s, in New York, and elsewhere, the various well known and so called heads of families and boss of bosses, could not undertake any work because the FBI watchdogs were always in the way, then you had the secondary problem of informers and wiretaps, even a simple night out was ruined by Police observation and surveillance teams, it got so no one could relax or make a move, so it was put forward and agreed that an undercover boss of bosses would run the USA mafia, make all the real decisions, carry the books and be the real boss, they needed someone they all trusted, someone with brains, which ruled out Lucky Luciano and most of the Italians, so the man elected to run the mafia was Jewish, reliable and had a good head, they elected Longy Zwillman, who was ideal for the role, and virtually unknown to the public or the FBI. When someone was arrested, needed bail money, needed to issue orders in his absence, then Zwillman stepped into his shoes and acted has his caretaker.
We need to remember that the real crime figures towards the end of the 70s became respectable business men, admittedly they started out as Eastside, NY punks but responsibility forced change on them and the old shotgun days became things of the past. You need to remember they dealt in gambling, prostitution and illicit liquor, in NY there was over 3500 unlicensed pubs, speakeasies, and no one including the Police or the Politicians wanted the unpopular new drink laws. For this reason they got repealed. This anger at these unfair laws was expressed by many a working man who said in effect: I work all week, at the weekend I want a bet on a horse, go to the pub for a drink, and surely that’s my right. He was right off course and the law was repealed. Gambling needed regulation so the State could be sure of getting it’s cut.
Collectively all these people Jewish or not, added to ‘our world and it’s history, they brightened up many a dump of a city with prime examples being LA, New York, Chicago, and Las Vegas (Las Vegas is a dump and trailer trash city, a desert) nearer to home after WW2, maybe thirty or more European cities were killed, dulled and quite dismal places after the Nazis killed members of the Jewish community. Jews are piano players, clowns, dancers, singers, impresarios, theatre owners, they run film studios, dance schools and radio and TV channels and write books and scripts. If you feel you can live without these attractions then your fellow citizens can’t, hence their popularity worldwide and success.
There are no excuses for the behavior of Jewish gangsters. Like other groups a few Jews used vice, gambling and street bookmaking to exploit the market created by the bans on alcohol, gambling and prostitution, the same way as people today run beer from Calais to London and beyond. Yet, it needs to be said that there were very few Jewish gangsters – eight at most. And there was far more famous Jewish boxers, champs and boxing managers and promoters than gangsters. The reason is they don’t make them like they used to anymore. The Holocaust was all our tragedies, we all lost, and it was a disgrace.
Thanks for the comment, EB, but the title of this post is meant to be facetious.
Yenta, (Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me A Match)
Use some sense, the word Jewish Gangsters is used by Google to create 3.7 million hits in 19 seconds, and Holocaust deniers can cut and paste your words and say to others “Read what this Yenta Jewess is saying, No Jewish Mafia,can you believe it”, they then switch this to mean “having read what she says (they’ve quickly made you the official spokesperson for every Jewish person in the world – congratulations on your promotion, Mazeltov) (they say) “Can you now believe what they the Jews say occurred during the Holocaust” – “(the Holocaust) is all lies and this Yenta person remarks about gangsters proves it ,” It does no such thing but do they care!
You cannot reason with people who think Dr Mengele was a doctor employed in Auschwitz to save lives, you cannot argue with those who think Hans Frank was a German soldier whose duty was to obey orders, and even worse they claim Hitler meant well for Germany!. If you Google (search words) ‘Treblinka was a transit camp” you will see what I mean.
There’a a war going on out there and we need to remember the majority of people today have not heard of the Holocaust, have not heard of Auschwitz, Birkenau, Chelmno, Belzec, Mauthausen and Natzweiler and the other 2000 concentration camps, MTDSRIP, These places are such bad news for any right thinking person that you cannot be facetious about any aspect of them, or discuss Jewish affairs on the internet without exercising some caution. Apart from the above there must be 500 Arabs / Palestinians throwing internet knives at Israel on a daily basis and we do not want to give them any stones or ammo. For your further information this is what the Neo-Nazis write:
Quote . (cut and paste) Hitler’s decision against Poland was right. Hilter ‘s decision to kick Jews and Jew Bolshevihs was rght. Hitler’s defence against Staln was right.Hitler never directly killed as many people as Jewish Bolsheviks. So you have to admit that Hitler’s killing of people was insignificant compared to the Jewish murdering Catholic people & even the Jewish people who lived under Jewish tyranny. Admit it..The Jews are evil killers of Europes people
* The writer lives in England, and wants to see an Hester Street Parade held in New York,
I actually liked the Jewish gangsters better than any other ethnic group. They were more low key, more organized and more clever. Although the Italians are colorful, the Jews were better businessman.