The Becker Rosenthal Case 2

from Rose Author of The Starker: Big Jack Zelig, the Becker-Rosenthal Case, and the Advent of the Jewish Gangster,

on the left is Whitey at the trial

On December 2, 1911, a Five Pointer named 'Julie' Morrell crashed a ball thrown by the Boys of the Avenue. Zelig shot him full of holes and hurled him into the street. The following February Morrell's partner Frank Renesi was found with his head blown off. When Jonesy the Wop, a friend of both slain men, cursed Zelig as a 'Jew bastard' and attacked him in a restaurant with a knife, the Jewish gangster disarmed him and sliced up his face.
The violence peaked in early June 1912, when Zelig, Lefty Louis, and Whitey Lewis brawled with Tricker and a bevy of Five Pointers at a Chinatown dive, and all were arrested. When Zelig left the courthouse afterward, he was shot in the head by a gunman named Charles Torti, a known associate of Jack Sirocco. While surgeons operated on him, his boys nearly killed Tricker in a drive-by shooting.
Upon his discharge from the hospital, a weakened Zelig was sent to the Tombs prison to await bail. Once it was posted, he left for Hot Springs to complete his recovery. His departure took place days before New York witnessed a murder whose repercussions would send five men to Sing Sing's electric chair. This tragedy and ensuing miscarriage of justice would go down in history as the Becker-Rosenthal affair.
In July 1912 a waning gambler named Herman Rosenthal declared to the press and District Attorney's office that Police Lieutenant Charles Becker, who headed one of the NYPD's elite Strong Arm Squads, had been a silent partner in his gambling house for months. When Becker's superiors forced him to shut the place down, an enraged Rosenthal retaliated by exposing the policeman as a venal wolf in a cop's uniform. His allegations made the front pages of the daily papers and shocked New Yorkers with lurid tales of police-gambler collusion.
Becker and the NYPD weren't the only ones burned by the heat that ensued. Told that he needed corroborative witnesses before his case could be taken to the grand jury, Rosenthal named fellow gamblers who wanted no part of an investigation. Threats against his life were heard in poker rooms and stuss houses everywhere. Therefore, when Rosenthal was shot to death outside the Metropole Hotel on July 16, popular opinion was divided on who ordered the hit: some pointed the finger at Becker while others blamed the victim's former colleagues.
The latter theory appeared to be correct when three gamblers named Bald Jack Rose, Louis 'Bridgey' Webber, and Harry Vallon were arrested. Rose, who was also a graft collector and stool pigeon for Lieutenant Becker, admitted to hiring the shooters. But he stressed to District Attorney Whitman that he and his two confederates had acted as agents of Becker, who threatened them with jail time or worse if they did not silence Rosenthal forever.
Although all three were known enemies of the victim, the politically ambitious Whitman foresaw more glory in prosecuting a corrupt cop for murder instead of three scheming lowlifes. He hurried them before the grand jury, which promptly indicted Becker for murder, and granted them immunity in exchange for their testimony.
One by one, the hired guns were picked up. They were none other than Lefty Louis, Whitey Lewis, Gyp the Blood, and Dago Frank. With their leader out of town, they had somehow been persuaded to bend the rule about avoiding gamblers' feuds. Jack Rose would say that fear of Becker made them acquiesce, but Benny Fein met with Zelig in Boston and filled him in on what had really happened.
On the night of July 15, Rose had met with the quartet at Bridgey Webber's poker place, plied them with liquor and cocaine, and convinced them to beat up Rosenthal. After the target was located at the Metropole, the original agreement received a lethal modification. Harry Vallon, seething with hate, fired at Rosenthal first, and a coked-out Louis and Gyp mechanically followed suit. Whitey missed fire, and Dago Frank was not even present, having decided at the last minute to go home.
Zelig was furious. He knew that Lieutenant Becker had nothing to do with the crime. Jack Rose tried to hire him to kill Rosenthal in April, citing a long-standing personal feud. Zelig refused, but Rose did not give up. When the gangster was jailed in May on a bogus gun-carrying charge, the bald gambler offered to use his influence with Becker to get the charge dropped. All he wanted in exchange was for Zelig to order his men to rub Rosenthal out. Again he was rebuffed. Rose tried one more time, visiting Zelig in late June while he was in the Tombs prison awaiting bail for his role in the Chinatown brawl. Temper soured by pain from his bullet wound, the gang leader erupted and sent him running. Jack Rose made no further approaches- until Zelig was out of town and unable to interfere.
Now Herman Rosenthal was dead, and Becker and the gunmen were facing the electric chair. Zelig knew that he could not save his friends, as there had been too many witnesses to the shooting, but he could make sure that they had company on Death Row. Zelig notified Becker's defense team that he had exculpatory evidence to offer. He was no lover of cops, but he could not sit and watch an innocent man suffer the death penalty because Jack Rose successfully conned an ambitious district attorney. Shoenfeld's 'man of principle' was prepared to act.
Zelig would never take the stand. On the rainy evening of October 5, 1912, two days before Becker's trial was due to commence, the gangster left Segal's and went to a nearby barbershop for a shave. Then he boarded a Second Avenue streetcar to go home. As the trolley neared Thirteenth Street, Zelig was shot in the head from behind by 'Red' Phil Davidson, a pimp who poisoned horses as a sideline. Davidson, who was arrested without difficulty, said that he had killed Zelig for beating him and stealing his money -a sum he fixed as different times as $400 and $18.
No one believed him. Davidson was a noted coward and an easy tool for those with a stronger will. It was whispered that certain members of New York's political machine did not want Zelig to testify, worried that if Becker went free, Rose and his cohorts might bargain for their lives by handing some bigger fish to Whitman on a platter. Because the gang leader was too powerful to be silenced via threats, he was assassinated. His evidence died with him, and Lieutenant Charles Becker was convicted of murder and executed in Sing Sing's electric chair on July 30, 1915. Lefty Louis, Whitey Lewis, Gyp the Blood, and even Dago Frank, who had not even been present at Rosenthal's murder, were electrocuted in April 1914.
The funeral of Zelig Lefkowitz, alias Big Jack Zelig, was attended by thousands. His supporters hired a fleet of cars to transport his remains to Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn. Talmud Torah children and a choir conducted by Cantor Goldberg of the Shaare Shamayim synagogue accompanied the coffin. Benny Fein and other tough gangsters joined Zelig's family in shedding tears. The conservative Jewish press decried the dead man as a murderer and reprobate, but the residents of the Jewish quarter had benefited from the gangster's protection, and their grief was genuine. Many knew that he died because he intended to save a man's life.
Shortly after Zelig's death, Abe Shoenfeld wrote, "Jack Zelig is as dead as a door nail. Men before him - like Kid Twist, Monk Eastman, and others - were as pygmies to a giant. With the passing of Zelig, one of the most 'nerviest', strongest, and best men of his kind left us."
Interesting Facts
* Zelig’s sister-in-law, Amelia Lewis, became a celebrated attorney who helped reshape the American juvenile justice system. In 1967, thanks to a case that she argued, the United States Supreme Court ruled that juveniles charged with criminal offenses were entitled to the same procedural protections in juvenile courts that adults had in the criminal courts.
* Zelig’s great-grand-nephew, Jan Lefkowitz, portrays him in a series of webisodes titled Our Gotham. www.monk1903.com

More On The Life Of Whitey Lewis

Seiden Sing Sing

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from the Jews Of Sing Sing

Library Of Congress Images Of The Becker Rosenthal Trial

becker-rosenthal

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Whitey is partially visible in the last slide with his hand holding his cap as he arrives at Sing Sing.

Whitey Lewis: In The News

Whitey Lewis 2

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75 Market Street: Jacob Seidenshner, aka Whitey Lewis

According to Ron Roth, Whitey Lewis lived here. Maybe he went to PS 177.
I would guess that 75 Market is the middle building, since the current 77 is on the corner of Market and Cherry and houses the Hamilton Madison Nursery School. This picture is a portion of the 1933 picture from the previous post.
About Whitey

Jacob "Whitey Lewis" Seidenschner, a member of Horowitz's gang.
The Lenox Avenue Gang was an early 20th century New York street gang led by Harry Horowitz (better known as Gyp the Blood), and was one of the most violent gangs of the pre-Prohibition era.
The Lenox Avenue Gang was started sometime during the early 1900s by Horowitz as an independent group of around twenty members. It consisted mostly of pickpockets and burglars, under Jack Zelig's Eastman Gang. Mainly operating around 125th Street, the gang generally committed muggings and robberies although they were occasionally hired out for murder by Zelig. Under Horowitz's leadership the gang produced many of the top criminals of the early century, including Jacob Seidenschner, Louis Rosenberg, and Francesco Cirofisi. Prominent New York police detective Val O'Farrell called Cirofisi "one of the toughest men in the world", and police suspected Cirofisi of at least six homicides. However, they were unable to charge him due to lack of evidence. An associate of the gang, Cirofisi's girlfriend Dutch Sadie was known to carry a butcher knife in her clothing, and she assisted Cirofisi in several muggings.
While successful in its early years, the gangs downfall began when they were hired to murder gambler Herman "Beanie" Rosenthal, a suspected police informant. Horowitz, Seidenshner, Rosenberg, and Cirofisi drove to the Metropole Hotel on July 16, 1912 and, calling out to Rosenthal, shot him several times as he appeared on the street before fleeing the scene. The gangsters were seen by dozens of witnesses and quickly arrested. When questioned, they told police that they were hired by NYPD Lieutenant Charles Becker, who had ordered Rosenthal's death after he had informed on Becker.
Gyp the Blood, Jacob Seidenschner, Louis Rosenberg, and Francesco Cirofisi were charged with the murder of Rosenthal, sentenced to the electric chair, and executed on April 13, 1914. With the loss of their leaders, the Lenox Avenue Gang disbanded entirely within several months.

239 Henry Street: Benny Fein

According to Ron Roth, Benny Fein was born here in 1889
from the six for five site

BENJAMIN FEIN aka DOPEY BENNY, 1889-1962
Dopey Benny acquired his nickname from an adenoidal condition, giving him a constant sleepy appearance. Another product of the Lower East Side, there was however nothing dopey about Benny. He had above average streets smarts and proved himself a visionary when it came to organizing the art of the shtarke, the strong-armed man. After a youth of stealing, pick pocketing and other petty crimes, his wayward habits caught up with him for awhile when was sent up to Sing Sing for armed robbery. Upon his release in 1910, he joined Big Jack Zelig's gang and it was during that period where he blossomed from just another street thug, exuding leadership qualities that he would later put to use.
That leadership in question fell into his lap after boss Zelig was shot and killed on a 14th St. streetcar. It was one of the many ripple effects that followed in the wake of the murder of gambler Herman Rosenthal, and the trial of Lieut. Charles Becker that followed it. Gang business could no longer operate in the same manner as it had in Zelig’s day, as there were too many prying eyes from every corner zeroing in on Lower East Side criminal activity. The corrupt nature of police and politicians and their affiliations to these gangs had been exposed, and some Tammany Hall members, once in bed with such gangs and rewarded handsomely, stepped back as well. Fein knew that the press coverage had been too hot on the Rosenthal – Becker affair and new angles needed to be figured out. While predecessors like Eastman and Zelig had dabbled in labor racketeering, Benny made it his first and foremost order of business and excelled at it. After all, he was the son of a tailor.
The Lower East Side garment industry was changing. Tenement sweatshops were giving way to factory - like production lines in buildings all around town up to 33rd st., and the industry was learning to meet the demands of a national marketplace. At the time, New York was producing the majority of clothing for the rest of America. Jews were at the forefront of this industry, as it was the one trade that they brought with them from Eastern Europe that helped them start a new life on these shores. Unions were set up early on to help the predominately Jewish labor force to make sure they were not exploited and working conditions were deemed satisfactory. At the forefront was the United Hebrew Trades (UHT), who in the past was not shy in relying on some of their own members to do a little intimidating with owners when needed. But after some time realized they would need to rely on some outside help for a little more persuading. Enter the gangster and his henchmen. Part of the problem in hiring whom some would deem ‘undesirables’ was there was never a guarantee they would work only for their side. Money motivated most of these men more than someone’s labor troubles, and reaping rewards from both sides of the conflict while it continued was a concern by the unions when hiring these gangs.
Benny Fein was different however. He was a man of principles. I like to think one particular event may of marked him significantly, and deeply affect they way he would conduct his business. On March 25, 1911 a fire broke out at the Triangle shirtwaist factory, housed in a building in Greenwich Village facing Washing Square Park. An unwatched, misplaced cigarette ignited a raging blaze that spread quickly within minutes, kindled by baskets of spare rags soaked in sewing machine grease and clothing materials. It consumed the upper three floors of the ten story building in less than ten minutes. Firemen at the scene were unable to conduct proper rescue operations, as their ladders just couldn’t reach past the sixth floor. Panic had set in for many of the trapped workers; most of them young women, and many of them Jewish. For unexplained reasons, some of the fire exits and doors leading to stairway exits and safety were locked or blocked. What crowds below at first thought were clothing bundles hurtling to the ground, soon realized the grim truth. Faced with the prospect burning alive, many watched in helpless horror from the street as some of the trapped workers started leaping, some holding hands with others, to their death nine and ten stories below. It was, and continues to be the worst workplace disaster in New York’s history. The death toll ended up at 146, and 123 of them were women, who worked more than fifty hour weeks in abhorrent working conditions. Despite unexplained locked doors, a fire escape that collapsed, and unsafe working conditions, Triangle’s owners were found not guilty of negligence in the trial that followed. District Attorney Charles Whitman, who was to be instrumental in the arrest and prosecution of Charles Becker had witnessed the building burn. So did Herbert Bayard Swope, the journalist who would print Herman Rosenthal’s story fifteen months later. I like to think Benjamin ‘Dopey’ Fein was one of those horrified in the crowd of thousands as well, helpless and angry, and vowing to try and make a difference.
"My heart lay with the workers." he was once quoted after refusing an offer of $15,000 to work on the manufacturer's side. He was unable to double cross his friends. His men, ‘shlammers’, broke heads only for the unions and under Benny they kept their loyalty. His operation was on the UHT payroll for four years. He also had ties to the ILGWU, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Dopey’s gang were given union cards as to picket alongside regular members so their actions seemed legitimate. He also was involved with the bakers’, butchers’, hat frame and neckwear workers, ragpickers’ and signpainters’ unions among others. Benny was busy. He almost single-handedly organized the practice of labor racketeering and thuggery into a full – fledged business. He drew up contacts and pay fees depending on the kind of slugging and ‘persuading’ that was needed by the unions. Instead of fighting, he created an elaborate system of territorial jurisdictions, delegating work to other gangs. Once contracted, he would sub-contract outside of the Lower East Side, somewhat unheard of in an underworld where most are motivated by greed and domination. Benny wasn’t dumb though. He still got his percentage on every sub-contract.
He also treated both sexes alike, giving equal pay for equal work, a very unusual practice back in the day. Because he used bats, clubs and blackjacks, though rarely guns, women were indispensable to him and served as ' toters' concealing weapons in mufflers, wigs, or a special hair-do of the day called the 'Mikado tuck-up'. Benny’s ladies encouraged nonunion female workers to join the unions with some intimidating practices as well. Of course, not all union members were happy with this scenario, after all, their demands were not always being met with legitimate manners, and a working relationship and trust between workers and employers could never be solidified completely. But, anytime anyone objected to their union’s strong - armed tactics, one of Benny's guerillas would warn them to keep quiet and avoid trouble. Not everybody was happy with Benny and his men, but many probably kept their jobs as a result.
Of course it wasn’t always smooth sailing for Fein and his gang. Rivalries with Italian labor racketeer Joe Sirroco led to many battles along Broome St and other areas. Dopey had led the way, building a monopoly, which was being continually challenged. Sirroco’s crew followed Dopey’s lead but in the other direction, working for the manufacturers. He also had a long running rivalry with Joseph ‘The Greaser’ Rosenzweig, and the labor slugging wars between these gangs would continue throughout 1913 and onwards. When an innocent bystander was shot and killed by accident after a botched set up by Dopey's men on Sirroco's troops, his power slowly began to decline.
Following numerous arrests, his last slip up was in the fall of 1914. Fein confronted and threatened to kill B. Zalamanowitz, a business agent for the butchers’ union who refused to pay Benny his $ 600 fee to protect his striking butchers, saying his job had been unsatisfactory. Zalamanowitz, panicked and frightened, called in the police prior to Dopey’s next scheduled visit. Waiting in the wings, they watched as Benny repeated his threats, and promptly arrested him on first-degree extortion charges. This was nothing new, a few hours in the Tombs and someone would come forward with the bail money, just like they always did, and Benny would be home by supper. But nobody came. Perhaps this time around the bail was too high at $ 8000, which the police had compounded from previous arrests. Maybe Benny was getting too hot for union officials to contiinue their affiliation and decided maybe the labor wars needed one less general. Benny sat and fumed. He felt double-crossed by everyone. Perhaps he had had enough. Benny finally broke down and began naming names. His organizational skills contributed to his thinking ahead, that this day may eventually come, and he had stayed one step ahead. Benny had written every single transaction down, unbeknownst to most of his associates. His testimony was a few hundred pages in length, explaining all the inner working of all the strike breaking gangs, and the unions involved. This led to many arrests of higher ups of both in the UHT and the ILGWU. Twenty -three labor leaders and eleven gangsters were charged with murder, extortion, assault, and riot in the months that followed. The man who designed the empire was able to tear it down as well.
Up until recently, crime historians had lost sight of him after the age of 26 and that last arrest, assuming he had disappeared into the city’s streets and never heard from again. But thanks in part to his grandson, Geoff Fein, the rest of Grandpa Dopey’s life has been brought to light a little bit more. While his 1914 testimony in exchange set him free, it would be a few more years before Benny would fly straight. He was arrested numerous times over the next few years, still active in the labor slugging trades, but in a smaller role. Benny probably didn’t make too many new friends after his testimony and it was probably much like starting over. He had a court appearance in 1931 on assault charges, his first in over thirteen years. Ten years later, Benny faced the courts again. He and fellow mobsters Abraham Cohen, John Ferraro, Herman Fogel, and Samuel Klein were taken into custody after a police raid caught them with a stolen garment shipment worth $ 10,000. He and Cohen were pegged as ringleaders in a gang responsible for over $ 250,000, 000 worth of stolen garments over a three year period. This would be his last trip to up Sing Sing, after being spared a mandatory life sentence. In the years following his release, Benny would stay in the garment industry, but on the legitimate side this time for good, applying his trade as a tailor, which he had learned from his father and had never forgotten. He made his life in Brooklyn and raised a family.
Benjamin Fein may have of walked a crooked line, and his actions deemed unjustifiable by most. But as a young man he was passionate enough to the cause of the worker, which he truly believed in, and was moved enough to try and do something about it. He was a rare breed of gangster; one spared a violent end on the streets, or in the electric chair. He passed away in 1962 from cancer and emphysema.

217 Henry Street: Louis Lepke Buchalter

According to Ron Roth, the infamous Lepke lived here sometime between 1900-1910. Lepke was mentioned previously with a slide show
from wikipedia

Louis "Lepke" Buchalter (12 February 1897 – 4 March 1944) was a Jewish- American mobster of the 1930s. He is the only major mob boss ever to have been executed by state or federal authorities for his crimes.
Born in 1897 to Eastern European immigrants on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Buchalter took on the nickname "Lepke" at an early age. The name was an abridgement of the affectionate diminutive "Lepkeleh" ("Little Louis" in Yiddish) his mother had called him when he was a small boy. By 1919, at the age of only 22, he had already served two prison terms.
Upon his release, he teamed up with his childhood friend, Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro, gradually gaining control of the garment industry unions on the Lower East Side. He used the unions to threaten strikes and demand weekly payments from factory owners while simultaneously dipping into union bank accounts. His control of the unions later evolved into a general protection racket, extending into such areas as bakery trucking. The unions were an extremely profitable venture for him, and he kept a firm hold on them even after becoming an important figure in the organized crime world.
In the early 1930s, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Lepke, and John "Johnny The Fox" Torrio, (the former Chicago boss and mentor of Al Capone), formed a loose alliance. To take care of any problems that arose, Luciano's associates Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel and Meyer Lansky formed Murder, Inc. Originally a band of Brooklyn killers, they were highly effective and eventually used to fulfill most murder contracts. Control of the group soon passed to Lepke and Albert "Mad Hatter" Anastasia, as Siegel and Lansky had larger concerns to deal with. Murder, Inc., the name given to it by the media in the 1940s, was credited with carrying out numerous contract killings throughout the country, including the slaying of Dutch Schultz.
As many as a hundred corpses have been attributed to Lepke[citation needed]. Some of the hitmen at Lepke's disposal included Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, Seymour "Blue Jaw" Magoon, Frank "Dasher" Abbandando, Harry "Happy" Maione, Albert "Tick-Tock" Tannenbaum, and Harry "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss (known as "Pittsburgh Phil" despite his having no known connection to that city). The killing of Dutch Schultz on 23 October 1935 was a major killing for the group, as was the murder of Louis "Pretty" Amberg the same day.
Buchalter's downfall began in the mid-1930s when he went on the run from both the FBI, who wanted to arrest him on a narcotics charge, and from New York City special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey, who wanted him tried for his syndicate activities. He was tricked by a childhood friend into surrendering to the federal government in exchange for his not being turned over to Dewey. Buchalter was sent to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas on a 14 year term for narcotics trafficking. The sentence was later extended to 30 years on account of Buchalter's involvement in union racketeering.
Even more serious legal problems and consequences followed for Buchalter in 1940. That year, the state of New York indicted him for a murder committed over four years earlier, on 13 September 1936. On Sunday morning, a crew of Murder, Inc. killers, acting on Buchalter's orders[citation needed], had gunned down Brooklyn candy store owner Joseph Rosen. Rosen was a former garment industry trucker whom Buchalter had forced out of business. He had aroused Buchalter's ire by failing to heed Lepke's warnings to keep quiet and leave town. Rosen allegedly began threatening to expose Lepke and his vast crime operations to special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey.
Buchalter's order for the Rosen hit had been overheard by Abe Reles, who turned informant for New York State in 1940 and fingered Buchalter for four murders. Brought back from Leavenworth to Brooklyn to stand trial for the Rosen slaying, Buchalter's position was worsened by the testimony of Albert Tannenbaum. Four hours after they were handed the case, the jury arrived at a verdict at 2:00 a.m. on 30 November 1941, finding Buchalter guilty of first degree murder. The penalty at the time for such a crime in the state of New York was death by electrocution. Also convicted and sentenced to death for the same crime were two of Buchalter's lieutenants who had participated in the planning and carrying out of the Rosen murder, Emanuel "Mendy" Weiss, and Louis Capone (no relation to Al).
Buchalter's conviction took place in December 1941, and the New York Court of Appeals, upon review of his case, upheld his conviction and death sentence in October 1942. At the time, Buchalter was serving his racketeering sentence at Leavenworth Federal Prison, and New York state authorities demanded that he be turned over to them for execution. Buchalter resisted, managing to remain in Kansas and out of New York's hands until finally extradited in January 1944. Buchalter and his lieutenants Weiss and Capone were electrocuted within minutes of each other at New York's Sing Sing prison on 4 March 1944.
Many people are aware that the Gambino Family’s base of operations was (and probably still is) New York City’s Garment Center. Few know that the Gambinos inherited the garment rackets from a Jewish gangster—Louis (Lepke) Buchalter, considered by some historians to be the wealthiest and most powerful mob boss in American organized crime history.
Lepke was born on New York’s Lower East Side in 1897. His father ran a successful hardware store, and one of his brothers became a doctor. But Lepke was drawn to the dark side. His first crime boss was Dopey Benny Fein, who ran a large, successful violence-for-hire racket in the Garment District. Buchalter and his pal, Jacob (Gurrah) Shapiro, later associated themselves with Jacob (Little Augie) Orgen, Benny’s successor. Lepke and Gurrah took over after murdering Little Augie. But they didn’t simply replace Augie as thugs-for-hire—like Jewish Kelly Girls with muscle. Instead, they saw themselves as integrating and harmonizing forces across both management and labor sides of an industry in which violence and turmoil were ceaseless. Lepke used the model of the turn of the century “Robber Barons,” as well as military tactics, to gain control:
Buchalter looked for weak links in the industry’s chain of power. His first move was against the furriers’ unions, weakened by the Depression. He seized control of the rabbit furriers’ union, which was still viable, then moved in on all the others. By the end of his first year, both unions and management were paying him $5 million annually for peace.
He then attacked the garment unions. His target was the cutters’ union, small (less than 1,000 members) but highly strategic: no cutters, no patterns; no patterns, no dresses and suits. All the other unions shortly fell under his thumb. Then, in an unprecedented move for a labor racketeer, he muscled his way into controlling positions in three of the Garment District’s biggest manufacturing companies. Now Lepke had a commanding position in both labor and management. He recognized that trucking was crucial to the industry, so he knocked over the trucking companies and their unions.
By the mid-Thirties, Lepke controlled everything that was made in, and that went in and out of, the Garment District. Sidney Hillman, head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union and President Roosevelt’s top labor adviser (“Clear it with Sidney” was one of FDR’s most familiar phrases) allegedly paid Lepke $5,000 a week for peace. Lepke’s control was so pervasive that the first Federal charge against him, in 1936, was for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act by operating a “combination in restraint of trade”—a distinction previously awarded to the likes of U.S. Steel and Standard Oil.
Like a true Robber Baron, Lepke had a zeal for conglomeration. He knocked over the handbag industry, since handbags were accessories to the dresses he controlled in the Garment Center. Pursuing several clothing companies that had moved to Brooklyn to escape his clutches, he saw that the bakers’ union was ripe for takeover. Within weeks, every loaf of bread sold in New York City was paying a “Lepke tax.” He grabbed a big piece of the movie industry rackets without ever stepping foot in Hollywood: he forced his way into the movie projectionists’ union, another small but strategically placed group—no projectionists, no movies; no movies, dark studios.
Buchalter’s zeal for conglomeration proved to be his undoing. To provide an unlimited source of muscle needed to enforce his will, he reached into the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, the most densely populated neighborhood in America and the most concentrated source of Jewish thugs. There he (not, as myth has it, Albert Anastasia, Bugsy Siegel or Meyer Lansky) formed “Murder, Inc.,” headquartered in Midnight Rose’s candy store (where Yours Truly worked as a teenager). In another innovation, Lepke paid his killers weekly salaries, rather than commissions for various jobs, which would have encouraged them to work for the highest bidders. Ever the businessman, Lepke saw that Murder, Inc. was a cost center. So he endeavored to turn it into a profit center by hiring out his thugs to others. One of his biggest customers was Albert Anastasia, boss of the Ocean Hill section of the neighborhood. Albert A also provided Lepke with some Mafia killers.
With so much blood on their hands (as many as 1,000 killings according to some accounts), Murder, Inc. came under intense scrutiny from law enforcement. Charged with several murders, two of the group’s top lieutenants, Abraham (Kid Twist) Reles and Allie (Tick-Tock) Tanenbaum, turned state’s evidence in 1939 and provided thousands of pages of testimony, as well as details of dozens of murders, several of which implicated Lepke directly. Reles mysteriously “fell” out of a sixth-floor hotel window while in police custody, earning him the sobriquet, “the canary who could sing but couldn’t fly.” Lepke took it on the lam, hiding out in Brooklyn for more than a year while his business went to hell.
Finally, three of Lepke’s underworld pals—Albert A, Lansky and Abner (Longy) Zwillman, convinced him to surrender on Federal drugs and racketeering charges, which they assured him would result in no more than a five- or six-year sentence and protect him from New York’s special prosecutor, Thomas E. Dewey, who wanted to send him to the electric chair for his murders. Lepke met with famed radio and newspaper columnist Walter Winchell, who drove him to a car containing FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, to whom he surrendered. He was convicted on the Federal raps in 1941, and sentenced to 14 years in Leavenworth.
However, Lepke was so big that he had become a factor in Presidential politics. Dewey (who was to be the GOP Presidential candidate in 1944 and 1948) charged that FDR was being “soft” on Lepke to keep him quiet about his relationship with Sidney Hillman. The Justice Department obligingly turned Lepke over to Dewey, who prosecuted and convicted him for murder. Lepke was executed in 1944, the first and only mob boss to die in the chair. The Mangano/Anastasia Mafia family took over his labor and trucking rackets, which to this day are a Gambino stronghold.

The Jews Of Sing Sing LES Map

We previously mentioned this interesting book, Ron Roth's, The Jews Of Sing-Sing, which has this great map.
Back in October of 2008
and in March of this year
I found that some of these guys' tenements still existed

Pat Hamou's "Real Machers: Portraits of American Jewish Gangsters: Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery

The above video from the opening of Pat Hamou's "Real Machers: Portraits of American Jewish Gangsters. It's at the Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery, 1529 16th St. NW; through May 17, free; 202-777-3208, (Dupont Circle)
from the Washington Express by Amy Cavanaugh

MONETREAL-BASED GRAPHIC DESIGNER Pat Hamou's "Real Machers: Portraits of American Jewish Gangsters," brings 50 drawings to the Washington DCJCC and five to the Museum of Crime and Punishment next week. Many of the drawings are based on mug shots, and Hamou draws attention to an often-overlooked part of American history.
» EXPRESS: How did you develop an interest in Jewish gangsters?
» HAMOU: I came across a lineup photo of Abe "Kid Twist" Reles in a New York Daily News book of old crime scene photos [and] I became instantly mesmerized by his features. I have always had a love of old vintage photos, and how voiceless they can be, so combined with a love of noir and Weegee, I was off and running. I thought [Reles] just had a great face, and wanted to try and capture it, so I just sat down and drew him purely for my own pleasure and then wanted to find out more about him. As I dug in a bit more ...; the entire history suddenly opened up to me ... [and] one portrait became two, then three.
» EXPRESS: Where did you do research?
» HAMOU: I researched images at the New York City Municipal Archives and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. In a couple of instances, I came in contact with relatives who sent me a couple of personal photos. It's always a thrill to come in contact with surviving family members who do not look at their connection as a dark family secret and are excited to share anecdotes about this "exotic" member of their family.
» EXPRESS: What do you hope people learn from the show?
» HAMOU: To think about the whole notion of the Jewish gangster and how it fits into America's past, and the social implications and immigrant conditions of the time. ... They were bucking the system, operating outside of what was considered the norm ... and you can't help but admire their nerve. I'm not looking at glorifying them in any sort of positive light outside of part colorful character, part chutzpah, part reflection of their times and how it may change people's perceptions of certain Jews of the period.
It's always in the back of my mind that their high activity period ... came to an end just as the Holocaust was to begin. Two different worlds and an ocean away, yes, but one of Jew as defender/aggressor, and the other as victim, forms an interesting parallel.
» EXPRESS: Do you plan to keep working with the subject of Jewish gangsters?
» HAMOU: This is an ongoing project. There are a few personalities/gangsters I'm going to do, and it would be great if the exhibit goes to other places. ... New York would be my obvious next choice, since it's an integral part of the city's past. I also would like to see the project end up in book form, as that's been the primary goal from the start.

At The Tenement Museum March 12, 2009

I was looking at one of my favorite sights, the six for five blog of Pat Hamou and lo and behold I spotted myself. The picture there however didn't have the thought bubbles.
From that six for five post

Last Wednesday, March 11, authors Rich Cohen, Rose Keefe and Ron Arons held a talk called 'Jews Behaving Badly' at the Lower East Tenement Museum on Orchard Street in New York City.
The event was ironically held just around the corner from 286 Broome Street (left), the former home of Big Jack Zelig, and the subject of Rose Keefe's book.
Drawing a large crowd, the three authors offered their own views on the history of Jewish Gangsters, read from their books, and fielded many questions in a clear and articulate manner. It seems the entire era still held a fascination with the many in attendance, as their inquisitivness was nice to behold - kudos to the Lower East Tenement Museum for organizing this event.
A stranger irony to the evening however was that it was coincidentally held on the eve of the guilty plea and sentencing of Bernie Madoff the next morning just a few blocks away. While the interest in gangsters past is partly embedded in the lure of colorful characters, larger than life personalities, and the safe, comfortable distance of history; the likes of Madoff and his inexcusable white color crimes are nothing to be glorified or revered. Madoff deserved every year of the one-hundred and fifty that were handed to him and may they pry every dollar out of every corner of his dirty little world in hopes of restitution to those affected by his actions.

Jack Zelig From Our Gotham

a description of the youtube movie from Pat Hamou's six fr five site

Filmmaker Franklin Abrams has put together a great site called Monk 1903 which has just recently gone up. I met with Franklin last week in Manhattan, and besides being a fine fellow, has some very interesting plans in the near future with regards to keeping the spirit of Monk Eastman and New York's early 20th century Jewish criminal history alive and well and continually reaching a new audience.
The site will also serve as the future home for "Our Gotham", a upcoming bi-monthly webisode series depicting Monk Eastman and his loyal cronies, Joseph Brown and Lollie Meyers as they are plucked from life as they know it, 1903 Gotham and are thrown in the modern day reality of what is 2008 New York.
Abram's first short is up now on his site and youtube; an imagined scene between a down and out Eastman, fresh from his release from Blackwells Island Prison, and Big Jack Zelig in early 1912.
As a side note, Big Jack Zelig's great great nephew, Jan Lefkowitz, portrays his infamous great uncle in this scene, and the family resemblance is rather spooky.
The Starker's author Rose Keefe, provides the introduction and background.

Jack Zelig: More About The Starker's Last Stop

His death certificate from Rose Keefe's Jack Zelig site

Jack Zelig: Last Stop 286 Broome Street

the image is from my Famous and Infamous East Village Google Map The building is across the street fro Kehila Kedosha Janina.
what follows is from the six for five blog

Sunday, October 5 will mark the 96th anniversary of the death of Big Jack Zelig, so I thought it would be rather appropriate to plug Rose Keefe's The Starker, Big Jack Zelig, The Becker - Rosethal Case, And The Advent Of The Jewish Gangster, which has finally been released, and I must say it has been worth the wait.
I'm currently only halfway through but felt the urge to spread the word in the meantime...Keefe's book expands on what has really been in essence a supporting subplot of the entire Herman Rosenthal / Charles Becker affair. The Starker now brings Zelig to the forefront, with great new insights and information on his early days leading up to his guiding the scattered Eastman gang back on track after a life changing and violent incident in Chicago; his utter disdain for gamblers and drugs; his actual involvement in the Rosenthal case; and to that fateful trolley ride in October of 1912. Zelig Lefkowitz’s legacy remains a rare one. Not only had he the outmost respect from his gang, but also was considered as a patriarchal figure by the Jewish community of the Lower East Side at the time, the only leading Jewish mobster to do so. Zelig vowed to protect his neighborhood from menacing Italians who preyed on weak willed business owners, tauntingly pulled on old men’s beards hovering outside of Shuls, solicited young women into the snares of prostitution, and generally bullied the Jewish immigrant populace. Zelig kept his promise with vigor and affirmative force. Under Zelig’s command, his gang single-handedly extinguished outside oppression experienced by Jews on the streets from the roving band of Italian hoodlums, petty thieves, and pimps. Zelig was hero to most of the people whose old world distrusts of law enforcement and authority had carried over with them to the new land. They had Big Jack as their own protector instead. Even legitimate businessmen who knew of Zelig’s illegal interests couldn’t help but be impressed. They had created their own East Side Golem in a way.

Jews Of Sing Sing

from author Ron Arons' site for his book

Nationally known scholar Ron Arons tells the true story of Jewish gangsters and other shady characters who served time “up the [Hudson] river” and the NY Jewish community’s response. Ron did not choose the book’s topic. Instead, it was beshert (the Jewish equivalent of the English word ‘fate,’ literally, ‘meant to be’).
Years ago Arons learned that one of his ancestors served a ‘stretch’ at the famous prison. Ron first wrote a manuscript about his criminal ancestor and his ancestor’s father, a rabbi who also found trouble, only to be told by the publishing world that “it did not need another memoir.” Thinking creatively out of the box one day, Ron decided to research and write a book about every Jew who was ever behind bars at the Big House. Little did Arons understand the enormity of the topic he would undertake, which until now has not been covered with any intellectual rigor. The result: a 350-page book providing biographies of more than a dozen famous gangsters and lesser-known criminals and painting a broad canvas of Jewish criminality in New York City.

A Canadian NPR interview with Ron Arons provides the audio for the above slide show. The images come from the outstanding work of Pat Hamou at the six for five blogspot

Six For Five, the blog, is intended as companion piece for a work in progress book of the same name and anecdotes related to the main theme of the material. All comments, questions, historical corrections are most welcomed.