Gangsters vs. Nazis<br> How the Jewish mob fought American admirers of the Third Reich

Tablet Mag.com ^ | 7/2/18 | Robert Rockaway

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Thanks for the additional history on Rabbi Wise. His record of supporting the Communist Party through its front is well documented in the hearings/reports of the HOUSE SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON UN-AMERICAN ACTIVIES, esp. Appendix IX volumes, and of its successor, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), from about 1936 - mid 1940s.

So of these are online.

FYI: The late Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League JDL, was the modern successor to these groups mentioned in this threat. I knew Kahane and interviewed him for a major national newspaper organization.

He was meshuggana but wiley like a fox. He advocated for American Jews to defend themselves. He also worked with Herb Romerstein of HCUA/HISC to get historical materials on anti-Semitic into congressional reports. Don’t tell anyone that I told you this. /sarc

How do I know this? Besides being a dampened good investigative reporter, I knew Herb very well and he, plus the late FBI undercover agent Herb “I Led 3 Lives” Philbrick, were my mentors.

Small world isn’t it?

[Fedora]

Wise was working with Marxist groups even before the Soviets took power, and he became part of Soviet agent Willi Munzenberg’s network. In this he worked as a close ally of Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter and Julian Mack. His daughter Justine Wise Polier was also a Soviet supporter. And despite Wise’s rhetoric against Lansky, he and his political ally FDR were happy to use gangsters with Murder, Inc. ties like Sidney Hillman to organize violent labor strikes and rig votes.

David Berman’s mob was not exclusively Jewish: he worked with the Genovese family, who protected him from Midwestern rival Al Capone. Berman owned Minneapolis mayor Marvin Kline, but butted heads with Hubert Humphrey, prompting a move to Las Vegas with his ill-fated partner Bugsy Siegel. This initiated a long connection between the mob in Minneapolis, Chicago, and Las Vegas which persisted into the days of a casino skimming operation “investigated” by Nevada Gaming Commission chairman Harry Reid before his Senate days—but I digress. . .

As for Longy Zwillman, he was a bootlegging partner of Joseph Kennedy despite Kennedy’s anti-Semitism, although they had a falling out for a bit when Kennedy initially blamed Zwillman for a robbery he later learned was organized by Lansky. Zwillman ended up buying Kennedy’s liquor importing business after World War II, following a high-profile Chicago gangland killing involving associates of a young Al Capone runner who later became better known as Jack Ruby.