Inspired by
Hitler’s success at restoring Germany’s pre-eminence and learning from Hitler’s
success in burying the effects of the recession, America’s white community in
the 1930s created over 100 pro-National Socialist organisations.
May 17, 1934
Ring-fenced by the First Amendment,
they held public rallies, paraded in uniforms, carried the German Worker’s
Party banners, and published anti-Bolshevik periodicals.
Organised crime in the United States
was largely under Jewish control. Free from constitutional legalities, the
mobsters confronted the workers who supported Hitler’s genuine non-Jewish
socialism.
May 17, 1934, Madison
Square, New York
National Socialist Bund rallies in
New York City created a dilemma for the city’s Jewish leaders. With 20,000
members, the Bund was the largest anti-Bolshevik group in the United States.
Jewish leaders wanted the rallies
stopped, but could not do so legally. Nathan Perlman, a former Republican
congressman, believed that the Jews should demonstrate more combativeness. In 1935,
he furtively contacted Meyer Lansky, a leading organised crime figure, and
asked him to help. Lansky related what followed.
Meyer Lansky:
Notorious Jewish Gangster
The Jewish lawmaker assured Meyer
Lansky that a blank cheque and legal assistance would be put at his disposal.
Lansky, dubbed ‘the mob’s accountant’, was the most notorious of America’s
mobsters; the gangster ran an international syndicate.
The mobster referred to Germany’s
Communists as “my brothers”. Lansky refused the judge’s offer of money and
assistance, but he did make one request. He asked Perlman to ensure that after
he went into action he would not be criticised by the Jewish press. The judge
promised to do what he could.
May 17, 1934, Madison
Square, NY
Lansky rounded up his mobsters who
disrupted National Socialist meetings. Young Jews not connected to him or the
rackets also volunteered to help. Meyer Lansky and others taught them how to
use their fists and handle themselves in a fight. Lansky’s crews worked very
professionally. The arms, legs and ribs of American workers were broken and
heads cracked and the Jewish mobster earned quite a reputation for doing this
work.
Lansky later described to an Israeli
journalist one of the onslaughts in Yorkville, the German neighbourhood in
northeast Manhattan:
“We got there in the evening and
found several hundred people dressed in their brown shirts. The stage was
decorated with a swastika and pictures of Hitler. The speaker started ranting.
There were only 15 of us, but we went into action. We attacked them in the hall
and threw some of them out the windows. There were fist fights all over the
place.
Most of the Nazis panicked and ran
out. We chased them and beat them up, and some of them were out of action for
months. Yes it was violence. We wanted to teach them a lesson.”
Reflecting on his role in these
episodes to me, Lansky fumed that he helped the Jewish community but was met
with abuse. He believed the city’s Jewish leaders were pleased with his
actions, but they failed to stop the Jewish press from condemning him. When the
newspapers reported on the anti-Bund incidents, they referred to Lansky and his
friends as ‘the Jewish gangsters’, which infuriated him.
Judd Teller, a reporter for a New
York Jewish daily, relates how he met one day with several men who said they
were from ‘Murder, Incorporated’. They wanted a list of ‘Nazi bastards who
should be rubbed out.’
Afraid of the consequences of the
casual murder of worker socialists the Jewish community was disinterested in
the extreme violence proposed by their mercenary mobster.
Lansky replied, “Tell them to keep
their shirts on. We won’t ice (murder) the bodies; only marinate them.”
According to Teller the attacks by the Jewish mobsters was sufficient
“marination” to drastically reduce attendance at Nazi Bund meetings, and
discouraged Bundists “from appearing in uniform singly in the streets.”
After a series of attacks, the
Bundists protested at having their meetings violently broken up and asked Mayor
Fiorello La Guardia for protection from the Jewish mobsters.
La Guardia agreed under certain
conditions. The Bundists could not wear their uniforms, sing their songs,
display the swastika and workers flag, and could not march to beating drums.
The Bundists agreed to his terms. La Guardia confined their parades to
Yorkville and assigned Jewish and African-American policemen to patrol the
route.
The Bund was also active across the
river in Newark, New Jersey, which had a large German-American community. As a
Jew, Abner Zwillman, who controlled the rackets in that city, was unwilling to
allow the workers to operate with impunity in ‘his territory’. In 1934, he
turned to Nat Arno, a Jewish ex-prize-fighter, and asked him to organise
against the socialists.
The Jewish gang’s most infamous
action occurred in Schwabbenhalle on Springfield Avenue bordering the German
neighbourhood in Irvington. According to Hinkes:
“The Nazi scumbags were meeting one night on
the second floor. Nat Arno and I went upstairs and threw stink bombs into the
room where the creeps were. As they came out of the room, running from the
horrible odour of the stink bombs and running down the steps to escape to go
into the street to escape, our boys were waiting with bats and iron bars.
It was like running a gauntlet. Our
boys were lined up on both sides and we started hitting, aiming for their heads
or any other parts of their bodies with our bats and iron bars. The Nazis were
screaming blue murder. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. It was
too bad we didn’t kill them all. In other places we couldn’t get inside, so we
smashed windows and destroyed their cars, which were parked outside. The Nazis
begged for police help and protection, however, the police favoured us.”
Heshie Weiner, another participant
in the fracas, remembers that one of the Nazis who came running down the
stairs, had the indiscretion to shout “Heil” and was met by a chorus of iron
pipes. Weiner claims that after this attack, “I never heard any more of Bund
meetings by the Nazis in our area.”
In Chicago, Herb Brin, who worked as
a crime reporter for the City Press, joined the local Bund as a spy for the
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of the B’nai B’rith. He told me, “I joined the
Nazi party at the Hausfaterland on Western Avenue across from Riverview Park.
It was a hotbed of Nazi activity,” he recalled. From 1938 through 1939, Brin
kept the ADL informed about Nazi activities. What the ADL did not know was that
he fed information about Nazi marches and rallies to Jewish gangsters. “I
marched with the Nazis,” said Brin, “but I came back later with Jewish gangs
and we beat them up good.”
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