„[Israeli
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion] could hardly imagine hat Jewish women would
stoop to crime or prostitution. When an associate, Meyer Weisgal, who resembled
David Ben-Gurion, once told thim humorously that a girl had walked up to him on
a London street and offered her services, overwhelmed by the idea of
sleeping with the ‘Israeli prime minister.’ Ben-Gurion, clearly troubled, was
interested in only one thing: ‘Was she Jewish?’„ -- Dan Kurzman, 1983,
p. 39
„I
also take a kind of perverse pleasure in the thought that the most important
and influential book ever written is the product of Jewish thought ... I call
it ‘perverse’ becaue it is an instance of national pride which I don’t want to
feel and which I fight against constantly ...“I remember once a fellow Jew
remarking with satisfaction on the high percentage of Nobel Prize winners
who were Jewish. I said, ‘Does that make you feel superior?’ ‘Of course,’
he said. ‘What if I told you that sixty percent of the pornographers and eighty
percent of the crooked Wall Street manipulators wre Jewish? He was startled. ‘Is
that true?’ ‘I don’t know. I made up the figures. But what if it were
true? Would it make you feel inferior?’ He had to think about that. It’s
much easier to find reasons to consider oneself superior than inferior.
But one is just the mirror image of the other.’„ -- Isaac Asimov, 1994, p. 322
‘But
where do Jews enter the picture?’ I asked him. ‘Ah!’ said Simon [Wiesenthal],
slapping his knee. ‘I haven’t told you something else. A few years ago, I have
a talk with a man who went to school with Hitler. I ask him what Hitler was
like in school and he says, ‘Normal. But maybe this hatred began after got this
infection from a Jewish whore.’ ‘Are you saying that Hitler caught syphillis
from a Jewish prostitute?’ I asked increduously. Wiesenthal laughed and said: ‘What’s
the matter? You think only Jews can catch diseases from prostitutes?’ ‘No, but
were Jewish prostitutes common in Austria?’ ‘Why not? Is there a Gentile
monopoly on prostitution?’ ‘I just don’t see it as a vocation for a nice Jewish
girl.’ ‘A nice Jewish girl,’ Simon mimicked. ‘You have those ‘nice Jewish girls’
in Israel, too, these days and they had them in Vienna years ago -- when there
were more Jews.’ -- Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal File. William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI, 1993 p. 18
<![endif]>
At
the end of the 19th and beginning of the twentieth century, Jews were deeply
involved in what was popularly called „white slavery“: international
prostitution rings. „White slavery,“ notes scholar Albert Lindemann, „was a
concern of Jewish leaders throughout the world, who recognized it as a special
problem.“ [LINDEMANN, p. 33] [Jews have also dominated the pornography and
commercial sexploitation business, a trend which continues to this day -- see
Mass Media section]
„Between
1880 and 1939,“ notes scholar Edward Bristow, „the Jews played a conspicuous
role in ‘white slavery,’ as the commercial prostitution of that era was
dramatically called. Not only was this Jewish participation conspicuous, it was
historically unprecedented, geographically widespread, and fraught with
collective political dangers.“ [BRISTOW, p. 1] „Jewish trafficking,“ says
Bristow, „was anchored in brothel keeping, women freelanced or kept houses
while their husbands procured ... Jewish traffickers also supplied Gentile-run
houses.“ [BRISTOW, p. 56-57]
Rooted
largely in Eastern and Central Europe where they „dominated the international
traffic out of the area,“ [BRISTOW, p. 2] Jews were involved in prostitution
rings that networked, wrote Arthur Mora (of London’s Jewish Association for the
Protection of Girls and Women) in 1903, to „almost all parts of North and South
Africa, to India, China, Japan, Philippine Island, North and South America, and
also to many of the countries of Europe.“ [BRISTOW, p. 1] Jewish criminals
trafficked women under their control virtually anywhere, also including the
major cities of Bulgaria, Bosnia, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Ceylon,
Manchuria, South Africa, Rhodesia, and Mozambique. [BRISTOW, p. 181]
„By
1900,“ says Bristow, „Jewish commercial vice was largely incorporated in
underworld elements and many of it participants were predators of the poor.“
[BRISTOW, p. 89] Jewish pimps, procurers, and traffickers preyed mostly on
non-Jewish women, but even large numbers of Jewish women were part of their
stables.
In
1872, for example, Jewish prostitutes in Warsaw numbered 17% of the known
prostitution population, in Krakow 27%, and in Vilna 47%. [BRISTOW, p. 23]
Within the Jewish community itself, it was not uncommon for recruiters to marry
innocent Jewish young women and „deposit them in foreign brothels.“ [BRISTOW,
p. 25] Many of the Jewish criminal underworld figures apparently saw no
gap between their day-to-day activities and their religious lives, often
maintaining their religious obligations. A Warsaw thug, Shilem Letzski,
organized a small synagogue for Jewish „prostitutes, madams, pimps, and
thieves.“ This criminal community even had a rabbinical court „to settle
disputes between pimps.“ [BRISTOW, p. 60] In Constantinople, prostitutes
contributed money to „have their pimps called to Torah on holidays.“
[SCHNEIDER, p. 225] In New York City, „a public school and a large
synagogue were situated right next door to the house of prositution.“ [RUBINOW,
I., 1959, p. 114-115]
In
Buenos Aires, Argentina, notes Donna Guy, the Jewish pimp organization called
the Varsovia Society
„ostensibly functioned as a mutual aid society
... In fact, the Varsovia consisted of pimps who wanted to maintain their
business and still lead a religious life ... Varsovia associates established
their own synagogue on Guemes Street in the midst of the traditional bordello
district.“ [GUY, p. 22]
Israeli
scholar Robert Rockaway notes also, for example, that prominent Jewish American
mobster Longy Zwillman „always remained sensitive to his Jewish upbringings.“
When a close friend died, and the funeral was conducted in a church, Zwillman
refused to attend. As he explained it, he was an ancestral member of the Jewish
priest caste (the Cohens) and it was religiously forbidden to him to be with a
dead body in a room. [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 30]
Dr.
Louis Maretsky, the head of the B’nai B’rith in Germany, forlornly noted in
1912 that at least 271 of 402 prostitution traffickers on a Hamburg police list
were Jewish; in reviewing similar lists for Eastern Europe and South Africa at
least 374 of 644 were from the Jewish community. [BRISTOW, p. 56] (No
mention here is made of even higher possible percentages: as explored later, it
has long been a tradition for many Jews in their diaspora to formally change
their identifiable Jewish names). Concerning Galicia, Maretsky wrote that „the
prominence of Jewish traffickers and brothel operators there is no doubt. From
the files of the Austrian and German police there were 111 Jewish traffickers
active in Galicia and the neighboring province of Bukovina for 1904-08 alone.“
[BRISTOW, p. 56]
By 1889 Jewish women ran 203 of 289 (70%) of the licensed brothels in the „Pale
of Settlement“ (encompassing over 20 provinces in eastern Poland and western
Russia -- an area where Jews were about 12% of the population). 1122 of 5127
(22%) licensed prostitutes in this area were Jewish. [BRISTOW, p. 63] The
grievous political dangers for local Jewry in the context of enduring
interethnic hostilities, when 78% of the rest of the women were Gentile, many
indentured in Jewish houses, is obvious.
Further
in the West, 16 of 19 licensed brothels in Warsaw were run by Jewish women,
prostitutes in the low-class establishments were expected to service 40-50
customers a day, up to 60-70 on Holy Days. (In 1905 the respectable part of the
Jewish Warsaw community rioted against the brothels; 40 whorehouses -- legal
and illegal -- were reported destroyed, 8 persons killed, and 100 injured).
[BRISTOW, p. 61]
In
Minsk, Jews ran all four legitimate houses of ill repute. In the Russian
province of Kherson (which includes the city of Odessa) 30 of 36 licensed
brothels were Jewish-owned. The American Consul in Odessa wrote in 1908 that
the „whole ‘business’ of prostitution is almost exclusively in the hands of the
Jews.“ [BRISTOW, p. 56]
Martin
Fido notes another genre of Jewish Eastern European profiteer in the
prostitution world, in England:
„Latvian
ponces accompanied [prostitutes] to help them cross borders and
findaccomodation and working premises. These men were despised by police andby
some of the criminal fraternity for ‘living off immoral earnings.’ But they
werenot pimps ... They were effectively travel agents, couriers and managers in
strange and unfriendly places. Their arrival in London ensured that a
majorstrand of prostitution would be controlled by organized crime. One of
theseLatvians, Max Kassell, was still running a small stable of hookers in the
1930s,when he was murdered in Soho ... Jewish dominance of the East End
[ofLondon] and its crime was reflected in their Yiddish name, ‘spielers’
(placesfor games). In the Brick Lane neighborhood, Isaac Bogard, a Jewish
villainwhose swarthy complexion and tightly curled black hair earned him the
nickname ‘Darky the Coon,’ extended his interests. He began in the early years
of the 20th century by supplying muscle for street traders whowanted to prevent
newcomers from moving in, but he moved on to managing prostitutes and drinking
clubs.“ [FIDO, M., 2000, p. 19-20]
Then
in London there was Harry ‘Little Hubby’ Distleman, „a Jewish club manager,
gambler and possibly part-sharer (with his brother) in a chain of brothels.“
[FIDO, M., 2000, p. 31] Jewish author Chaim Bermant noted in the Jewish
Chronicle in 1993 that „In the same period (1903-1909), 151 aliens [in Great
Britain], most of them Jewish, were convicted for keeping brothels, and 521 for
soliciting ... Rabbi Avigdor Schonfeld ... protested that to draw attention to the
existence of Jewish prostitutes harmed the good name of the Jewish people.“
[JEWISH CHRONICLE, 1-15-93]
More
recently, Jewish singer Eddie Fisher recalls that „while performing in England
in the late 1950s I had become friendly with a Jewish song plugger, a man who
eventually left the music business to open a very exclusive whorehouse.“
[FISHER, E., 1999, p. 293] A little later, there was the infamous Colin Levy:
„In
1973, one of the better-known and more appreciated solo practionersof that tony
[London prostitution] underworld was Norma Levy (nee MaryRussell), an
Irish-born prostitute in her mid-twenties whose career ‘on thegame’ ws being
managed by her husband Colin Levy, a petty crook ...In 1973, Colin Levy found
himself short of money. Aware that one of Norma’s patrons was the celebrated
Lord Lambton, he decided to solvehis problem with a bit of blackmail. Camera in
hand, he lay in wait outsideNorma’s bedroom during Lambton’s next vist to her
flat. At the appropriatetime, at a signal from Norma, he burst into the room.
With flashlightspopping in his face, the stunned Lambton was frozen on film,
inflagrante delicto, for posterity.“ [Levy’s blackmail failed, but there wasa
resultant scandal, including the ethics of newspaper (where Levy triedto sell
his photos] that published accounts of the story] [KIERNAN, T.,1986, p. 162]
In
Vienna, authorities knew of about 50 Jewish prostitution traffickers based in
Czernowitz, „and they were a very inbred lot extending over two generations.“
[BRISTOW, p. 74] The most publicized ‘white slavery’ trial occurred in 1892, in
Lemberg (once also called Lvov, then a Polish provincial capital, today called
Lviv in Ukraine), where 27 traffickers -- all Jews -- were prosecuted for
ensnaring women to go to Constantinople, Egypt, and India. Some of the women
recruits understood their tasks, but others „were maids, others fieldworkers,
one a butcher’s helper, all apparently promised honest jobs.“ [BRISTOW, p.
74] (Lemberg, „a cradle of Zionism from the 1880s onward,“ also had anti-Jewish
riots in 1918. [KRAJEWSKI, S., p. 340] )
There
was a tradition of Yiddish folk songs about Jewish criminal behavior, like
this:
„I
am Salve, the thief,Four brothers are we;One is hungry, the other well fed,But
thieves all four are we.
One
is a pickpocket,The second a pimp, a handsome fellow;One is a hijacker on the
lookout forpackages,And I am a house thief.
A
pimp is common,As all agree:From his own wife,He gets the diseaseTo be a
hijacker is bitter:You can rupture your lung,It’s hard to earn something with
some ofthe packages,The best thing is to be a house thief.“[RUBIN, R., 1979]
„In
an age of pandemic anti-Semitism,“ says Bristow, „a Jewish pimp was a political
as well as a social force,“ [BRISTOW, p. 4] very emotionally reinforcing
anti-Jewish sentiments of the day. Jews were already blamed in central Europe
for a financial crash in 1873 and economic competition between Jews and
non-Jews was heightening.
A
young and enraged Adolf Hitler paid particular attention to the highly visible
phenomenon of Jewish street hustling and prostitution rings in Vienna, and was
incensed that many non-Jewish women were coerced into the largely Jewish-run
trade. „In no other city of Western Europe,“ he wrote in Mein Kampf, „could the
relationship between Jewry and prostitution, and even now the white slave
traffic, be studied better than in Vienna ... an icy shudder ran down my spine
when seeing for the first time the Jew as an evil, shameless, and calculating
manager of this shocking vice, the outcome of the scum of the big city.“
[BRISTOW, p. 84]
The
Jewish prostitution business extended from Europe across the world, where it
sometimes overlapped with French, Italian, Chinese, and other rings. In the
Punjabi (Indian) capital of Lahore, „Jewish pimps were in the habit of leaving
their women penniless only to reappear after workers had accumulated some
money.“ [BRISTOW, p. 195] In Rio de Janeiro Jewish immigrants from Russia,
Poland, Hungary, and Romania were so much identified with prostitution in the
late 1800’s that „the kaftan, a Jew’s traditional long gown, became synonymous
with pimp.“ [BRISTOW, p. 113]
Thirty-nine
Jews were expelled from Brazil in 1879 for soliciting women for prostitution
and running illegal whorehouses. [BRISTOW, p. 114] Of 199 licensed whorehouses
in Buenos Aires in 1909, 102 were run by Jews and more than half the
prostitutes were Jewish. [FRIED, p. 71] 4,248 Jewish women were
registered for licensed brothels in Buenos Aires between 1880-1913, and those
represented only the licensed ones. Edward Bristow estimates that 9,000 Jewish
women immigrants came to Brazil in a 25-year span in that era as prostitutes
(many were no doubt highly transient), when the total Jewish population of
Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay combined amounted to less than 60,000 people in
1910. [BRISTOW, p. 119] (Brian Viner, a columnist at England’s Jewish
Chronicle, underscores these figures from Argentina in this manner: „That I
know all this is thanks largely to my estimable cousin Ben, a fount of
information on Jewish gangster matters. I phoned him the other night and he
told me, just as I might tell someone that Arensal are top the league by a
point, that of 60,000 Jews living in Argentina by the 1920s, 9,000 were
involved in prostitution rackets. You have to admit it’s a conversation
stopper.“) [VINER, B., 11-29-02, p. 37]
In
1889, the Buenos Aires Bulletin Continental reported that 200 German/Austrian
women were held against their will by Jewish pimps from Poland. [GUY, p. 5] „Jewish
procurers,“ says Donna Guy,
„... became an organized ring in major cities all over the world. They
were particularly powerful in the Argentine port cities of Buenos Aires
and Rosario ... [GUY, p. 10] ... Turn-of-the-century reports
by the Hamburg B’nai B’rith [a Jewish fraternal organization] concluded
that most prostitutes in Buenos Aires were Jewish and that traffickers ‘dress
with ostentatious elegance, wear large diamonds, go to the theatre or
opera daily; they have their own clubs and organizations where wares are
sorted, auctioned, and sold ... They have their own secret wireless code,
are well organized, and-- heavens! -- in South America everything is
possible.“ [GUY, p. 19]
„Pooling
their financial resources in a kind of guild,“ notes another Jewish scholar,
Howard Sachar,
„the
[Polish Jewish] newcomers [to Argentina] in 1909 controlledslightly more than
half the nearly two hundred licensed brothels inBuenos Aires. Jewish women
served as their madams, and Jewishimmigrant girls often were recruited and
lured into their hands asprostitutes.“ [SACHAR, H., 1985, p. 283]
In
Cuba, Jews „became engaged in the ‘White Slave Trade,’„ says Robert Levine, „importing
prostitutes -- some Jewish -- from Poland ... Many women recruited to the
business had been trapped in the Russian and Polish Pale and throughout the
Hapsburg Empire by force or fraud, and the human dilemma was great.“ [LEVINE,
p. 66] Incredibly, even in Germany, where Jews have such a
horrible history, such Jewish-related problems still bubble beneath the surface.
In 1994 a US News and World Report reporter noted the observations of a
Frankfort policeman patrolling Precinct 4:
„‘It’s
all owned by Jews,’ [Bernd] Gayk says of the train station’s red lightdistrict.
‘Practically everything in this area is owned by German Jews. There is a single
cabaret here owned by a German, but the rest belongsto the Jews.’„ [MARKS, J.,
p. 42, 44]
Shockingly, even shortly after the Holocaust when there were only a few
thousand Jews left in Germany, they remained prominent in the prostitution
business there. In 1961 Rabbi Richard L. Rubenstein interviewed Dean Heinrich
Gruber of the Evangelical Church of East and West Berlin. Rubenstein notes that
Gruber nearly himself perished in a Nazi concentration camp, and he „had a long
and heroic record of opposition to the Nazis on Christian grounds as well as
friendship and succor for Nazism’s chief victims [Jews].“ [RUBENSTEIN, p. 5] „The
problem in Germany is that the Jews haven’t learned anything from what happened
to them,“ the Dean told a startled Rubenstein, „I always tell my Jewish friends
that they shouldn’t put a hindrance in the way our fight against anti-Semitism.“
[RUBENSTEIN, p. 7] Gruber then complained that „many of the brothels and risqué
night clubs, for example, were in Jewish hands, especially those in close
proximity to army camps.“ [RUBENSTEIN, p. 7] And Rubenstein’s response to the
clergyman? „Look,“ the rabbi said,
„I
don’t understand why you are so troubled about a pitifully smallnumber of Jews
in shady positions or interested in making moneyrather than following more
edifying pursuits. It seems to me that every person pays a price for the kind
of life he or she leads. Whyshould Germany be upset about a few such Jews
unless they areoverly involved in other peoples’ lives? Must every Jew make
himselfso pale, so inconspicuous, even invisible, that he will give no
offenseto Germans? ... After what happened [the Holocaust], why should any Jew
remain and worry about German approval?“ [RUBENSTEIN,p. 7-8]
Marvin
Wolf, a Jewish captain in the U.S. army serving in Germany, recalls that in
1971
„Rabbi
David, the Jewish chaplain in Frankfort am Main -- and the husband ofmy mother’s
second cousin -- told me that he knew several Jewish millionairesat whose homes
I would be welcome -- but, ‘I’m not crazy about any of them,’he said. ‘What do
you mean?’ I asked. ‘After the war, ‘45, ‘46, Germany was inruins,’ he
explained. ‘Terrible times. Nobody had money except the Occupationforces and a
handful of Jews who had survived the camps and got a monthlypension --
government reparations. In Frankfort, a few of these Jews recruitedstarving,
desperate German girls and opened brothels. Got their revenge, and got rich,
too. They’re in other businesses now, but do you really want to spendPesach
[Passover] with such people?“ [WOLF, M. J., 1998]
In
1909 one Jewish observer, Marcus Braun, estimated there to be 50,000 Jewish
immigrant prostitutes in America and 10,000 pimps. (Edward Bristow considers
these figures grossly inflated, but notes that one of Braun’s colleagues,
echoing at least public feelings about the problem, thought there were up to
100,000 American Jewish women of ill repute.) In any case, the Jewish pimps of
New York City (who owned many of the „so-called French“ bordellos in the
Tenderloin district and „sought to fill them with French prostitutes from
abroad“) [BRISTOL, p. 165] had their own official organization: „The New York
Independent Benevolent Association.“ Frances Kellar, a respected social
worker, wrote in 1907 that „the two nationalities who may be said to be central
to the disorderly house business in New York [are] French and Jewish ... French
houses ... are not ... to be so much feared as the Jewish ... [which are]
thoroughly vicious and bad.“ [BRISTOL, p. 165] By the turn of the century, „hundreds
and hundreds“ of Jewish women walked the Lower East Side of New York City as
prostitutes. [FRIED, p. 8] Benjamin Altman described the whores he saw on Allen
Street: „A hundred women on every ... corner. Tall women, short women. Fair
women. Ugly women.“ [FRIED, p. 12]
Between
November 15, 1908 and March 15, 1909, almost three-quarters of 2,093 prostitute
cases before the New York City courts were „native-born“ women, „a
preponderance,“ noted Albert Fried, „who were presumably Jewish.“ (Ethnic
categories included „Russian“ and „Polish,“ but not Jewish). [FRIED, p. 8] Of „foreign-born“
prostitutes in court, 225 were Jewish, 154 French, 64 German, 31 Italian, 29
Irish, and 10 Polish. [FRIED, p. 8]
„The
Jewish pimp,“ says Albert Fried, „freely used marriage brokers and unemployment
agencies to snare his victims -- the young, the lonely, the innocent, the weak,
the alienated, the oppressed.“ [FRIED, p. 14] Starting out with one whore in
1890, for example, by 1912 Motche Greenberg had a „controlling interest in
eight whorehouses and 114 women and was earning $4,000 a month, an incalculable
amount by today’s standards.“ [FRIED, p. 18]
In
Chicago, by 1907 Rabbi Emil Hirsch declared that 75% of the „white slavery“ in
his city was controlled by Jews. [BRISTOW, p. 177] The Jewish periodical the
Forward forlornly reported that „the facts that were uncovered at the trial
[for corruption] of [police] inspector McCann are horrifying. 75% of the white
slave trade in Chicago is in Jewish hands. The owners of most of the immoral
resorts on the West Side are Jews. Even in Gentile neighborhoods Jews stand out
prominently in the nefarious business.“ [FRIED, p. 70] (Even in 2001, as a
result of an undercover police investigation, Joel Gordon (a cantor, i.e., the
man who sings liturgical songs and leads prayer in a synagogue) and his wife
Alison Greenberg were tried in Chicago for running a brothel. Ginsberg was also
charged with acts of prostitution. „We now realize,“ said Howard Peritz, a
member of Gordon’s synagogue, „that in starting a congregation around a man
[Gordon], we were canonizing him.“ [JEWISH TELEGRAPHIC AGENCY, 1-5-01] The same
year, a synagogue room (Finchley Synagogue’s Kinloss Suite) in Great Britain
made the news when it hosted a „stag party with three strippers performing ‘sexually
explicit acts.’„ Some of the money raised was supposed to go to a Jewish
charity.) [ZERDIN, J., 29-01]
In
1987, a Jewish ultra-Orthodox group bought a slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa,
and began hiring illegal non-Jewish aliens from Eastern Europe to do the menial
jobs at their company. Despite the fact that only Jews dominated the upper
eschelons of the firm, and Jewish author Stephen Bloom’s underscores Jewish
exploitation and condemnation of the entire non-Jewish community in his book
called Postville, he frames the following in cautiously distancing, apologetic
form:
„[A
woman in her mid-twenties said:] ‘The managers are incredibly rude. One manager
fired me because I wouldn’t go to bed with him.’ The translator used theword ‘manager,’
but the woman was most likely speaking of one of her supervisors, who would
have been a Christian. ‘If the manager wants to sleepwith you and you do, you
get a raise. If you don’t, he makes your lifemiserable. Girls have no choice.’
No one [of a group of fellow workers] disputed what the woman said.“ [BLOOM,
S., 2001, p. 138]
In
1932, a few Polish-American officials of the city of Hamtramck (within Detroit)
were charged by a grand jury with the „familiar charge of collusion with vice
interests for gratuities.“ The central player among those convicted was Jewish,
Jacob Kaplan, „head of a vice syndicate“ who collected $2,000 a month from
disorderly houses in the Syndicate.“ [WOOD, 1955, p. 53-54] In 1941, the
Detroit Free Press listed the names of those involved in another exposed vice
ring in the area of Hamtramck, a ring that drew city officials and
administrators into its web with bribes and payoffs. The racketeers included „Sam
(the Jap) Gross, Hamtramck area brothel operator;“ Charles Berman, „charged
with operating a vice resort;“ Irene Kaplan, „defendant in accusations as
brothel keeper;“ Ike (Forty Grand) Levy, „vice resort operator;“ Kitty (Big
Nose) Silverman, „reputed vice resort keeper;“ and Jack (alias Jack Jesus) Silverman,
„husband of Kitty.“ [WOOD, A., 1955, p. 84, 86]
Israeli
scholar Robert Rockaway notes the dimensions of Detroit’s all-Jewish
Prohibition-era Purple Gang:
„Detroit’s
Canadian border and existence of Jewish-owned Canadian distilleries, such as
those of Sam and Harry Bronfman [Jewish founders of Seagram],
offered opportunities to Detroit’s Jewish gangsters that rivaled
bootlegging operations in Chicago and New York. Instead of transporting the
liquor themselves, the Purples arranged for the Jewish-dominated ‘Little
Jewish Navy’ to bring it across the riverfor them ... The Gang’s dealings also
extended to the sale of stolen diamonds, narcotics and prostitution in
Canada.“ [ROCKAWAY, R., 2001, p. 113-]
In
New York City, among many other Jewish madams, was „Polly Adler, the
Polish-born madam of New York’s most famous bordello of the 1920s and 1930s.“
[MCDOUGAL, p. 92]
Jewish
comic and eventual TV superstar Milton Berle recalls Adler’s brothel: „When
I had a night off from the Paradise, John Garfield [the actor, born Julius
Garfinkle], who was a good friend, and I went over to Polly Adler’s for dinner.
Sure, the world knew Polly as a [brothel] madam, but her friends knew her as an
intelligent woman, fun to be with, and a good cook. After dinner, Polly excused
herself because she had to make some telephone calls to arrange for girls for
her clients. John and I were talking when I said, ‘I don’t know about you,
Julie (his real name was Jules), but I feel sort of horny.’ John thought he
might feel the same way, so we spoke to Polly about it, and she said she could
get us two of her $100 girls -- Polly handled only the best -- and send them
around to wherever we said. John and I went our separate ways to await our
deliveries. When the doorbell rang at my place, there was Carole [a woman Berle
had been dating and already having an affair with].“ [BERLE, M., 1974, p 186]
A
little earlier, „the most famous madam in turn-of-the century New York was
Rosie Hertz. Saving enough from her own prostitution, she and her husband,
Jacob, opened several brothels on the Lower East Side during the 1880s ... The
epitome of the ‘white slaver,’ Hertz was called by one judge the ‘godmother for
prostitutes.’ Another critic considered her ‘as much a public feature of the
lower East Side ... as the Brooklyn Bridge.“ [GILFOYLE, T., 1992, p. 295]
Dallas,
Texas? When Jack Ruby (Rubenstein) murdered Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963, he owned
the Carousel, a local strip tease joint. As Gerald Posner notes, „Ruby’s main
competition was from the Theatre and Colony Clubs, owned by two brothers, Abe
and Barney Weinstein. In 1961, they had introduced amateur strip-tease dancing.“
[POSNER, p. 362] Atlanta, Georgia? By 1999, owner Steve Kaplan’s Gold Club „nude
dancing“ business had been „indicted on federal racketeering charges that
included prostitution, credit card fraud, money laundering, police corruption
and ties to the Gambino organized crime family.“ His lawyer, Alan Begner, was
also Jewish. „Since 1982,“ noted the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, „Begner
has carved a lucrative niche as a lawyer of adult entertainment establishments,“
representing about half of the 45 in metropolitan Atlanta. „I knock out laws,“
he explained to the newspaper. Begner’s interest in strip joints began when
another Jewish owner (Emmanual Isaacs of the „She Club“) asked him to represent
him. [RANKIN, B., 12-5-99, p. 2D]The Associated Press further noted in 2001
that Gold Club owner Steven Kaplan (club manager: Norbert Calder) was
„accused
of building a $50 million fortune in part by providing prostitutesfor
celebrities. Atlanta’s Gold Club is one of the most profitable nude clubs in
the country, popular among convention-goers and visiting
celebrities. Federal investigators say it is also a
high-priced brothel that pumps cash intothe Gambino crime family ... [The
Federal indictment against Kaplan] saysKaplan ordered more than 20 beatings of
people who did not repay loansat high rates of interest.“ [COURT TV, 4-2001]
The
most famous „sex club“ in history (prospering in the 1970s and 1980s before the
AIDS epidemic) is probably Plato’s Retreat, based in New York City. Its owner
was also Jewish: Larry Levenson. As Jewish scholar David Allyn describes it:
„First
of all, you have to picture the Ansonia Hotel, which is a late 19th
centurywedding-cake of a building in the heart of the upper west side in New
York. Inthe basement of the Ansonia was Plato’s Retreat, then the world’s most
famoussex club. Men and women would stroll about the Ansonia lobby in nothing
but towels. In the club, they would have sex with possibly a dozen or so people
in a single night. Plato’s Retreat represented the commercial version of what
washappening in people’s apartments and living rooms across the country.“
[BOOKMARK, 2000]
Green
Bay, Wisconsin? George Tane, also Jewish, „was a bootlegger who controlled
Green Bay, Wisconsin. After Prohibition, he owned all the houses of
prostitution in the city.“ [ROCKAWAY, R., 1993, p. 214] Atlanta, Georgia? In
2001, Steven Kaplan, owner of the nude „Gold Club,“ faced a Federal indictment
on counts of „loan sharking, money laundering and bribing police officers.“ He
was also accused „of building a $50 million fortune in part by providing
prostitutes for celebrities ... Atlanta’s Gold Club is one of the most profitable
nude clubs in the country.“ [COURT TV, 4-30-2001] [See also evidence in this
volume -- Mass Media 2 Chapter -- about prostitution rackets controlled by
today’s „Russian“ mafia, which is largely Jewish in organization; Heidi Fleiss
(the much-publicized, high-priced Jewish prostitution „madam“ to Hollywood
stars), famed Jewish prostitute Xaviera Hollander („The Happy Hooker“), and
details of enormous Jewish influence in the worlds of „smut“ and pornography]
With
the American public beginning to note the high Jewish representation in the
prostitution trade; some journalists implied wider corruption. In the June 1909
issue of McClure’s magazine, for instance, George Kibbe Turner wrote:
„Out
of the Bowery and Red Light districts have come the newdevelopment in New York
politics -- the great voting power of the organized criminals. It was a notable
development not only for New York, but for the country at large. And no part of
it was more noteworthy than the appearance of the Jewish dealer in women, a
product of New York politics, who has vitiated more than any other single
agency the moral life of the great cities of America in the past ten years.“
[BELL, p. 187]
„It
is an absolute fact,“ wrote Ernest Bell in his 1911 book about white slavery, „that
corrupt Jews are now the backbone of the loathsome traffic in New York and
Chicago. The good Jews know this and feel keenly the unspeakable shame of it.“
[BELL, p. 188] „The criminal instincts that are so often found naturally in the
Russian and Polish Jew,“ wrote Frank Moss in a popular volume called American
Metropolis (1897), „come to the surface in such ways as to warrant the opinion
that these people are the worst element in the entire make-up of New York City
... A large proportion of the people of New Israel are addicted to vice.“
[FRIED, p. 55-56]
„Vice
and crime did pervade the Lower East Side,“ remarks Albert Fried, „and no one
knew it more keenly than its residents. The better part of wisdom, so far as
they were concerned, was to keep the disgrace quiet, to avoid publicizing it.“
[FRIED, p. 59] Meanwhile, in the early 1900’s the National Council of Jewish
Women even had Yiddish-speaking volunteers working to keep new female
immigrants at Ellis Island „out of the clutches of men (often Jewish) who would
try to entice them into prostitution.“ [SCHNEIDER, p. 224]
By
the early years of the twentieth century, large urban department stores had
reputations „as breeding grounds for prostitution.“ In New York City, for
example, Macy’s fell under suspicion to some, in part for its proximity to a
former red light district. In 1913, Percy Strauss, the Vice President of Macy’s,
hosted a „vice vigilante“ group to investigate his store. „Strauss,“ notes
William Leach, „no dour Puritan, had a personal interest in leading a campaign
against vice. For one thing, as a German Jew and spokesman for the Jewish
community, he had to disprove the charge -- widely made -- that immigrant
Jewish women (and many of his own employees, therefore) were more likely than
other women to be prostitutes.“ [LEACH, p. 117] By 1915 the Committee Against
Vice (of which Strauss had conveniently become chairman) published a report
that affirmed that Macy’s was „normal.“ „On the other hand,“ says William
Leach, „testimony in the ‘secret reports’ told a different tale.
Saleswomen, it was revealed, passed around pornographic cards and poems about
themselves, talked openly about ‘sex’ and ‘sex desire,’ and ‘gossiped about
fairies,’ as one investigator put it. Private accounts by other investigative
reformers echoed this view, that things at Macy’s and in other department
stores were hardly ‘normal’ or ‘decent.’ ‘The strongest temptation of girls in
department stores,’ warned one reformer, ‘is not poverty but luxury and money.’„
[LEACH, p. 118]
Although
Jewish poverty was -- and is -- often argued as a major reason for their high
international representation in such a vice, a 1914 League of Nations survey of
25 Jewish prostitutes in Buenos Aires showed that only 4 of them claimed to be
poor before their new trade. Nine, however, stated that their family lives had
been „immoral or abusive in some way.“ [BRISTOW, p. 95] (As Robert Rockaway
notes about the dozens of members in Detroit’s all-Jewish criminal Purple Gang,
which was involved in everything from murder to prostitution: „[Purple Gang
members] were not products of crushing poverty, broken homes, or widespread
economic despair. Most of them had been raised in lower middle class households
where the father had a steady, if not well-paying, job.“) [ROCKAWAY, R., 2001,
p. 113-]
And
what, in complete dismissal of the facts of history, is the common Jewish
perspective about the unabashed prominence of Jews in the „white slave trade?“
This, in 1998, from Jewish scholar Gary Tobin in a popular Jewish newspaper:
„For those with a knowledge of history of 19th
century anti-Semitic propaganda, the idea that Jews are running „the white
slave trade“ is nothing new. Cartoon like stereotypes of loathsome Jewish
villains trading on the lost virtue of non-Jewish maidens was standard
material for the Nazis and their precursors ... It took a sick mind to
imagine that Jews were running the world’s oldest profession.“ [TOBIN,
Distinguished, p. 51]
Tobin
was responding to a very disturbing article in the New York Times (January 11,
1998) which described the horrible situation that Slavic Gentile prostitutes
face today, trapped in Israel. As the Times notes, with the collapse of the
Soviet Union and a resulting economic chaos, literally hundreds of thousands of
Russian and Ukrainian women have been dispersed throughout the world, most
entrapped in an international prostitution trade run by the „Russian mafia.“
(Although it is certainly inferred, what the Times article does not overtly
mention is that a significant part of the Russian mafia is Jewish. See later
chapter). Glenn Frankel, however, a Washington Post correspondent in Jerusalem,
took the perspective in 1994 that „there was much talk about the Russian mafia
muscling in [to Israel], although the police and most crime experts agreed that
the brothels were almost entirely under the control of the Israeli mafia and
that the Russians worked mostly as low-level managers or hookers.“ [FRANKEL, p.
175]
„Israel
has become a routine destination for the global trafficking of women,“ noted
Leonard Fein in a 1998 Jewish Bulletin,
„women
coerced into prostitution. The thousand such women brought into Israel annually
derive principally from the countries of the former Soviet Union, and the way
they get to Israel is that they are ‘purchased,’ each one costing between
$10,000 and $20,000. And they are, of course, expected to repay the cost to
their masters through what amounts to indentured servitude -- or, if you prefer
the simpler and more straightforward, slavery ... Some [are] as young as 15,
and even 12 ... Each woman earns between $50,000 and $100,000 for her pimp. The
turnover of the prostitution trade inIsrael comes to some $450 million a year.“
[FEIN, 1998, p. 21]
In
a country of six million people, this averages about $75 a year paid to a pimp
for every man, woman, and child in Israel. There are today 150 brothels and sex
shops in Tel Aviv alone. [SILVER, E., 8-25-2000, p. 32]
In
an interview with Marina, a Russian prostitute, the (Jewish) Forward noted in
1995 that there were nine or ten „Russian“ prostitution rings in Israel. „Girls
are regularly beaten to keep them obedient,“ Marina told the Forward, „... [The
Israeli police are] regularly paid off with free visits to our girls. A
reporter like you thinks you’re picking up a stone from the road, but you might
find you’re digging into a mountain.“ [SHILLING, p. 5] As a report by
Israel’s Women’s Network noted in 1997:
„Every
year, hundreds of women from the former Soviet Unionare lured to Israel,
gaining entry by posing as immigrants, onthe promise of finding lucrative jobs,
and then are lured intoprostitution by abusive pimps.“ [GROSS, N., 1997, p. 16]
In
1998, Hungary’s Consul in Tel Aviv, Andrea Horvath complained that four
Hungarian women „had allegedly met their Israeli employer in a Budapest
discotheque. They were hired as dancers but were later forced to provide sexual
services as well.“ [MTI, 3-20-98] In 2000, Robert Friedman, in talking about
his book about the „Russian Mafia,“ noted Seimon Mogilevich, head of a major
Jewish mobster network, noting him as „one of the world’s biggest traffickers
in women, Eurasian women.“ [PENKLAVA, M., 5-3-2000]
„Women
are sold into the sex business in Israel for between $5,000 and $15,000,“
reported the Jerusalem Post in 1998, „while the pimps who buy them can earn
between $10,000 and $50,000 a year per woman ... 2,000 women are brought to
Israel from the CIS and forced by pimps to work as prostitutes. Many are
brought here on false pretenses and held against their will.“ As Ira
Omait, head of the Haifa Emergency Shelter for Women told the Post, „We are
fast heading in the direction of trade in minors for prostitution and slavery.“
[COLLINS, L., 12-15-98, p. 5] Incredibly, as noted in a Jerusalem Post
editorial in 1998, „According to the Women’s Lobby [a women’s group in Israel],
part of the [prostitution] problem is that there is no law against slavery in
Israel.“ [JERUSALEM POST, 1-13-98, p. 10]
“Poor Women of Ex-Soviet Union Lured Into Sex Slavery“ headlined a 1998
Associated Press story. Women forced into prostitution in Israel, noted the
article, were locked in rooms and provided only food and condoms. And Israeli
law on the subject? In 1996 150 men were arrested for pimping or running
brothels. Merely 21 cases went to trial, and no one was ever convicted of a
crime. [LINZER, D., 6-13-98] In 1998 an Israeli judge even ordered an
insurance company to pay for a client’s prostitution addiction: „An
Israeli insurance company has been ordered to pay 300,000 shekels ($80,000) to
fund the prostitution habit of a man injured in a car accident.“ [DEUTSCHE
PRESSE-AGENTUR, 4-22-98]
The man claimed that since a 1993 car crash he couldn’t form relationships with
women and relied on the prostitution world.
The
1998 New York Times article noted that more than 1,500 Slavic prostitutes --
mostly from the Ukraine -- have been deported from Israel for residence
infractions in the past three years. (Israeli oppression knows no end: „Unlike
many countries, Israel does not pay airfare for deportees.“ [LINZER, D.,
6-13-98]) Prostitution is not illegal in Israel and clients include
foreign workers, „Israeli soldiers with rifles on their shoulders,“ business
executives, and tourists. The Times noted that
„The
networks trafficking women run east to Japan and Thailand, wherethousands of
young Slavic women now work against their will asprostitutes, and west to the
Adriatic Coast and beyond ... The routes are controlled by Russian gangs based
in Moscow ... In Ukraine alone ... as many as 400,000 women under 30 have gone
in the past decade ... Israel is a fairly typical destination ... Police
officials [in Israel] estimate that there are 25,000 paid sexual transactions
every day. [This in acountry with a population of 6 million]. Brothels are
ubiquitous ... Oncethey cross the border [into Israel] their passports will be
confiscated [by pimps], their freedoms curtailed and what little money they
havetaken from them at once ... The Tropicana, in Tel Aviv’s bustlingbusiness
district, is one of the busiest bordellos. The women who workthere, like nearly
all prostitutes in Israel today, are Russian. Their bosses,however, are not. ‘Israelis
love Russian girls,’ said Jacob Golan, whoowns this and two other clubs, ‘....
They are blonde and good lookingand different than us ... And they are
desperate. They are ready to doanything for money.“ [SPECTER, p. 1]
„The situation,“ wrote Jewish
author David Weinberg in an 1998 article about prostitution in Israel entitled
Not So Holy Land, „is enough to make you cry in despair, or vomit from shame.“
[WEINBERG, D., 1-18-98, p. 8]
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