The book was not only informative, it was entertaining, which was a hard thing to accomplish when one considers the subject matter. Still, the author did just that. For me, the book was particularly engaging because I am Jewish, my dad was a contemporary of many of the gangsters and an immigrant from Russia, like so many of them. While we did not associate with them, we knew of them. We lived in Brooklyn, and I was familiar with the areas mentioned in the book. My uncles fought in the Golden Gloves. My aunt had Bugsy Siegel’s picture in her photo album. Abe Reles’ family lived within walking distance from my house, albeit with a change of last name. After reading this book, I learned that the lives of my family and the lives of the gangsters had many different dimensions. I didn’t know about the German organizations that had tried to spread Hitler’s Aryan supremacy in the United States. I had not heard of the German Bund in America or of the Silver Shirts, before reading this book. I didn’t realize the breadth of my father’s fear of the taint of Communism until after I read it. Also, at one time, I lived in Minnesota, near St. Louis Park. I learned that it was once a haven for Gentiles who didn’t want Jews in their neighborhood. Ironically, when I lived there, it was a haven for religious Jews and was called St. Jewish Park behind closed doors.
I have read extensively on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust and still never knew about this part of America’s history with mobsters fighting Nazis. I did not know that there were German-American organizations actively recruiting people to support Hitler’s National Socialism. I knew that Minnesota had a large pro- German, Nazi contingent, and anti-Semitism was alive and well there when I lived there too, but I did not know about the Nazi camps in the Catskills that taught children to hate. They inserted themselves in The Borscht Belt, the Jewish Haven, to recruit and convert them to Hitler’s demented plan.
The book gave me a whole different viewpoint about the idea of Jews going to the slaughter like lambs, during the Holocaust. These Jews fought back, albeit in America. In Germany, it was almost impossible to resist the mounting hate and anti-Semitic policies, but there was a strong Underground effort to stop Hitler. The mood of America, politically however, was anti-war, and the powers that be were also not always for the cause of Jews. In some ways, the current war in Ukraine is suffering from the same malaise in world opinion.
I grew up being ashamed of Murder Inc., not wanting to be associated with hoods in any way. After reading this book, I wish that most of them had not ended up so badly, because when they were called upon to defend against antisemitism, they did not shrink from the responsibility. As the reader gets to glimpse into their lives, they will discover that wherever they lived and “worked”, they were not cowardly thugs, but sometimes brave men willing to fight for their Jewish brethren when others would not or could not. In fact, no one is all bad or all good.
In America, incongruously, a judge, a rabbi, and a gangster made strange bedfellows, but they indeed slept together to fight hate. How they did it is the subject of this book, and it is a wild story that takes place, largely, over a short period of time. The author tells it with a sense of humor. He traces the history of these gangsters and he softens their edges, as he explains how they fought the influence of the Nazis in America, even when FDR did not. These were men who had been guilty of some pretty heinous crimes, but they rose to the occasion and performed heroically when called upon. Many of the names will be new to the reader, but some like Mickey Cohen, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Abe Reles, et al, will be on the tip of everyone’s tongues. Suffice it to say, these hoodlums and gang members knew how to be heroes as well as villains, and they worked well with their counterparts, who worked for law and order, in order to humiliate and stop the anti-Semitic effort of some wrongheaded Germans in the United States, Germans who were trying to awaken Hitler’s Aryan dream in America.
Judge Nathan Perlman, Rabbi Steven Wise and a gangster, Meyer Lansky, engineered a plan and worked together to fight Nazis. They worked tirelessly to organize the only people who could get away with the effort to defeat the pro-Hitler American-Germans who strutted in their uniforms and displayed their swastikas while shouting Heil Hitler. It is sad to think that there was so much support for Hitler in my own America, but happily, there was a group that could work under the radar to show them that Jews were not to be trifled with, by anyone, ever.