How Meyer Lansky Organized Jewish Mobsters to Fight Nazis Who Held 1939 Madison Square Garden Rally

[Mosby]

9. There were a lot of Jewish gangsters involved.

A new York judge organized a Jewish "resistance" movement to take on the Bund and others like the Silver Shirts.

You might like this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Gangsters-vs-Nazis-Mobsters-Battled/dp/0806541792

Snippet:

New York judge Nathan D. Perlman was apparently a big believer in the adage: If you need a job done right, you’ve got to turn to the right people. So in 1938, he called up notorious Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky with a favor to ask of him.

Perlman called Lansky to a face-to-face meeting and asked him to direct Jewish gangsters to violently break up meetings of the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi organization for Americans of German origin.

Perlman asked if Lansky had some boys who would want to punch Nazis. Lansky said he most definitely did, and he suggested that they could do more than just beat the Bund members up.

“I want you to do anything but kill them,” Perlman warned the organized crime boss.

Prominent rabbi Stephen S. Wise, who was on hand to lend clerical gravitas, echoed the judge’s sentiment.

“I’m sorry, but we cannot condone killing,” he said.

This left Lansky to tell his associates they could “marinate” but not “ice” those who showed up at Bund meetings, rallies and marches, where speakers spewed Jew-hatred. Lansky gave his boys license to use more than their fists. Baseball bats, clubs and other street fighting paraphernalia were fair game. Guns were out of bounds, as were the ice picks, which were the preferred weapon of killer Abraham “Kid Twist” Reles.

Book is a real hoot, the author is a true crime writer.