Stick 'Em up!

During the Real Machers exhibit, curator Wendy Fergusson had the great idea of providing sticky notes next to the guest book so people could write their comments and post them on the glass door dividers between the gallery and the lobby.

The question asked was :
“What is your Jewish Gangster story?”

Now that the exhibit has closed, the following is a selection of some of those sticky note comments, some of which I had a hard time deciphering the handwriting and unfortunately couldn't include at the present time.

I thought it would be entertaining to share these here on the blog (verbatim) as they prove to be interesting and at times amusing anecdotes. They also open a different kind of window onto the history of Jewish Gangsters as it seems a good number of close and distant relatives out there feel comfortable in sharing these family tales...

In order to respect people’s privacy, I’ve omitted the names signed to the notes.

If anyone out there has similar anecdotes to share, please feel free to post a comment (a cyber sticky note so to speak).

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“My mother’s cousin Betty Wasserman was reportedly married to Lepke Buchalter. Would love to know more about her…”

“Where is my Uncle Abe Zwillman? He invented Organized Crime, funded Columbia Pictures, and organized the crime convention in Atlantic City that started Murder Inc. “*
*This is a comment of my not including Zwillman in the show....

“My dad’s uncle was ‘whacked’ because of his gambling debts in the ‘50s. Him and my aunts almost totally refuse to talk about it.”

“Irving Holtzman was a cousin, who was an assassin for Murder Inc.
He married Dutch Schultz’s daughter and walked out on her after a few days. A “contract” was out on him. When Schultz was murdered the contract expired…and a few years later got an exclusive franchise from the mafia for jukeboxes as a reward. Irving lived in Brooklyn.”

“My father, Isadore Wexler, was a doctor at Sing Sing 1944 – 1951.
He pronounced many of the executed as “Dead after electrocution”
One of the Murder Inc. families left a case of liquor on the porch of our Ossining home so my father would take ‘extra care’ with the family member.”

“My mother dated Lepke’s nephew”

“My father’s business associate knew Lepke and Gurrah Shapiro, with whom he regularly played cards and remarkably, use to insult (jokingly) to their faces. This gave him a certain cache in my eyes. Also, the word in Brooklyn always was that Reles was pushed.”

“ My grandfather, Isadore Ducker, was in a ‘roller skating gang” in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He was called “flash”. Probably not so tough.”

“My grandfather Abe Samuel Belsky was a detective for the NYPD. He was a “tough jew” who busted mobsters and helped take down Murder Inc.”

“Samuel ‘Red’ Levine was a cousin to my great-grandafther, Abraham Levine, that immigrated through Ellis Island.”

“Abe Reles used to come into my grandfather’s bakery for free rolls. He came in to say hello to my grandfather the day before he was arrested and then tossed into the street 10 stories by the cops when he was talking.”

“My uncles were involved in the gambling ring in Brownsville – My father in jail for running cars and liquor in the ‘30s. Tiny Benson was a close family friend and a gentle giant (over 400 lbs).”

“My mother lived in a Brooklyn apartment. Two nice men from upstairs helped her with the baby carriage everyday bringing it up and down the stairs. She found out later that their nicknames were Lefty Louie and Gyp The Blood.”


“My grandfather had a shop in Brooklyn. At times Jewish gangsters would come by with a machine gun in a violin case and tell my Zahde to “stash it”!”

“My father was a dentist in Brownsville for 50 years and told us stories of having to cover for Jewish gangsters running from the police in hot pursuit. They ran up to his office on Sockmore St. pretending to be patients.”

“My grandfather was Gurrah – I am a successful physician / teacher. I was born ten years after his death. His son, Nathan Shapiro, was an outstanding citizen and philanthropist”

“We are from Brownsville. Born Stone and Riverdale. My father saw them all. He was an honest truckman and once saw Meyer Shapiro in the street. He called to my father “Hey Yearnis (sic) over here, let’s have a beer.” May father said “You stay on your side of the street Moishe”. Shapiro laughed, the next day was found riddled with bullets in Arnarsie (sic). Those guys were such brutal killers they made the Sopranos look like choir boys.”

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Abe 'Pretty' Levine

Abraham ‘Pretty’ Levine
1916 - unknown

The first generation of Brownsville's bullies, who had laid down the foundation for The Combination, kept their eyes open in search of young street kids to trap into their web with promises of easy money and street stature. The criteria simple: look for drifting, aimless kids who’ve quit school and perhaps had a tempestuous relationship with their parents, and whom, despite being hard honest people, were trapped in a cycle of low income opportunities. When Harry Strauss spotted the wayward fifteen year-old Abraham Levine, he fit the bill.

Levine was one of the young recruits the Jewish division of Murder Inc. lured into their snare, alongside the likes of Sholem Bernstein, Oscar ‘The Poet’ Friedman and Mikey Sycoff. To kids like young Abe, men like Strauss, Abe Reles, and Meyer Goldstein were neighborhood giants in size seven shoes who were respected and feared. While they saw most of the neighborhood adults as cowering and sheepish, these romanticized hoodlums towered in mistaken idol worship from these misguided teens. This type of hero worship even rivaled the like of baseball’s ‘Hammerin’ Hank Greenberg by many young Jewish kids at the time, depending on what side of the street you were from.
Surrounded by broken nosed mugs and thugs only a mother could love, it wasn’t hard for Levine to earn the moniker of ‘Pretty’. Graced with inviting blue eyes, soft features and wavy black hair, Abe may have quite likely made many a girl do a twirl while strolling along Pitkin Avenue in search of an egg cream.

Strauss put the teenage Levine to work and gave him a partner, Anthony ‘Dukey’ Maffeatore. Dukey came from Brooklyn’s neighborhood of Ocean Hill, the district nudged in as a sub-section of Bedford-Stuyvesant, and where resided the Italian delegation of Murder Inc. whose members were under the supervision of Louis Capone. Dukey’s spoken English was broken at best, and Lil’ Abner and Buck Rogers were his literary accomplishments.
Time passed as Levine and Maffeatore bonded and grew close as friends as well as being criminal colleagues, and handled most jobs thrown their way - running errands, small time extortion, collecting graft, stealing cars and license plates - low level gigs but crucial to the big wheel of operations. They were also the ones who matinee-ed in September of 1939 at the Lowes Pitkin Movie Theatre when the missing Irving ‘Big Gangy’ Cohen’ was spotted on the silver screen in Golden Boy almost two years after his disappearance into the Catskills’ forest.

Levine was picked up and booked on numerous occasions over a period of five years though charges never seemed to stick. According to 1938 NYC Police arrest records, Levine had strayed away from Brownsville and settled in Williamsburg at 104 India Street. His bertillion card listed his occupation simply as a clerk. By that year at the tender age of twenty-two, Levine was becoming a simple family man at heart, marrying young and starting a family now that his wife was pregnant. Fatherhood probably caused him to ponder more than once the implications of his criminal career more seriously and the possible fateful road he could find himself on.

The anxiety of leaving behind a pregnant widow was severe enough that he approached Abe Reles about getting out for good at some undetermined point. In pleading his case to the Brownsville chief, he argued that he had actually never murdered anyone and was really just a glorified chauffeur more than anything else. Reles, not generally know for his ‘warmth’ but still a family man himself, seemed moved enough by Levine’s plea to broach the subject with his colleagues. He was met with fierce resistance, especially from Strauss. Levine had been present at enough jobs to do considerable damage in court if he flipped; case in point the Walter Sage killing in the Catskills. Reles tried to assure them the kid would never sing, and just wanted a better life for him and his new bride while there was still time. The answer was a resounding NO from Goldstein and Strauss, and Reles should know better than to even ask. The discussion wedged a slowly ascending rift between Reles and the rest of the crew from that point on, and Levine was backed into a corner as a result and continued to soldier on despite his dilemma.

By 1940, the Brooklyn District Attorney would take care of the problem for Levine. The mobs of Kings County came under fire once William O’Dwyer opened the books on the countless unsolved murder cases that plagued the borough. Along with prosecutor Burton Turkus, a clean and sweep of Brooklyn’s undesirables and hoodlums included Pretty Levine, after his pal Dukey was picked up and broke down under interrogation and named him as his partner. Levine had recently been rather irked with Reles at the time he was rounded up for questioning. In hopes to get some help with medical bills incurred from his wife and young daughter, Levine went to Reles for a loan. Reles agreed but at the same rate of interest he passed along to anyone else on the street – which left Levine fuming at Reles’s insensitivity to his financial woes after years of loyal service though he had no choice but to accept the offer.
Surprisingly – he held tight-lipped under hot lights without playing stoolie at least for awhile, as he feared Reles more so than he started to loathe him. Eventually he gave in after his wife was jailed as material witness; a simple but effective chess move on the part of O’Dwyer and Levine started to talk. His fears were lessened and his loyalty to the Brownsville mob crumbled once Reles started to sing louder to the law than anyone else in the following weeks.

O’Dwyer knew he only had a small fish in Levine – but he was a step to catching the inner-circle, and he also proved to be a key factor in closing the case of the missing Walter Sage in Sullivan County. At his offering to ante up his plea bargain, he took the authorities up to Loch Sheldrake in the Catskill Mountains to point out where Sage’s body, ice picked and tied to a pinball machine, was dumped into the lake by Harry Strauss. Allie ‘Tick –Tock’ Tannenbaum, also playing pigeon at this point (and the coop was getting empty), corroborated his story. Levine was eventually handed a suspended sentence and shown the door for his collaboration.

In the end, after Abe Reles, under witness protection, was thrown out a seventh story window of the Half Moon Hotel, and all Brownsville’s top brass were singed at Sing Sing, but history has lost its link to what had happened to Abe ‘Pretty’ Levine.
Civilian life was more than likely incognito and whose to know if he pulled up roots from Brooklyn and seeked a better life somewhere else. He was only just twenty-five years old by the time the dust settled, plenty of time to start all over and stay on the straight line.

Real Machers closes this Sunday

Just a quick note to mention that the Real Machers exhibit will be closing this coming Sunday, May 17 after close to three months of exhibition time.

A BIG thanks goes out to curator Wendy Fergusson for doing a great job on the entire preparation and presentation.
A thank you is also in order to the Washington DCJCC for hosting the show in their Ann Loeb Bronfman gallery.
To all those who went and saw it, and to those who emailed me afterwards with their thoughts, a big thank you goes out to you as well.
I hope you found it interesting and enlightening.

There are plans brewing for the future that will hopefully see the show travel to other cities as well and I will update you with more info as it comes in.