The Last Jewish Gangster - How They Inspired The Italian Mafia
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 25 minutes
Words per minute
150.76535
Harmful content
Misogyny
18
sentences flagged
Hate speech
83
sentences flagged
Summary
Myron Sugarman is a former gangster, author, entrepreneur, father, and grandpa. He wrote a book called The Chronicles of the Last Jewish Gangster: From Meyer to Myron: The Story of the Rise and Fall of the Jewish Mobster.
Transcript
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our guys would go in and beat the shit out of these Nazi bastards.
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Our guys would go in with baseball bats, monkey wrenches, brass knuckles,
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stink bombs to throw into the place so when they come running out,
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You went to the powers to be because if you went through the system,
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Now, if you went through the system with the prosecution,
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What you can learn from an old gangster, you can never learn.
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If you went to Harvard, Princeton, you have these geniuses
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that go to the best universities and they can't do shit.
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He used to send two guys to kill and two guys to do the burial.
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So the two guys they killed never knew where the body was.
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Can I tell you who the biggest organized crime is
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My guest today is a former gangster, author, entrepreneur,
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And he wrote a book called The Chronicles of the Last Jewish Gangster
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Myron Sugarman, thank you for being a guest on Valley Tainment.
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So look, I've interviewed a lot of Italian mobsters, gangsters,
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Some we've had a lot of them, but never Jewish mobs.
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So if you don't mind educating myself on the audience on the history
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So the Jewish mob basically starts at the time of the large immigration
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And of course, poverty, they come into the United States, they move into the
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cities and they form the ghettos of the United States, whether it's Baltimore,
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whether it's Boston, New York, Brooklyn, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland.
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And these, the original, the original Jewish gangster was really, it was brutal.
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In fact, there's a book that I read many, many years ago that said 25% of the prisoners
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And the name of the book was called The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster,
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The interesting part about it, Patrick, was that you, they were involved in,
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in all forms of, of shakedowns, violence, beatings, murders, and prostitution.
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The majority of the, of the prostitute in, in that time were Jewish women.
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They'd come, they couldn't find their husbands, and the pimps would be waiting for them on the piers.
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Majority of the prostitutes in the 20s were Jewish women.
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Now, the generation that comes up that was either born in the United States or had recently immigrated
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from Europe, let's say, for example, Meyer Lansky, Benny Siegel, Lepke, Bulkalter, my father's world, and so forth.
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Some of them were born here and some were born on the other side and came as young kids.
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So these kids start as gangs and what they want, it's control of territory and neighborhoods and so forth.
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And that was to protect the ghetto from being invaded and beat up by kids from other ethnicities.
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And so the bush cart vendors and the store keepers, they would depend on these young kids to defend the neighborhood.
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The young kids were responsible to take care of the fathers, the uncles, the grandparents, the cousins, and everybody.
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So there was a very, very well-known gangster from Newark.
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If I'll say to people, who's Abner Longis-Willemann?
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If you didn't come from Jersey, you never heard of him.
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He was on an equal level with Meyer Lansky, Benny Siegel.
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And with Lepke Bulkalter and Murder and Corporate and so forth.
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It came from when the old timers were being invaded by Italians or Irish or other ethnicities.
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They would holler in Yiddish, rift for the longer.
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75-80% of the alcohol that came into Jersey came in under his rule.
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No, this now becomes the time of the Prohibition.
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Those kids that were gangs evolved into businessmen.
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But we'll get, I just want to, before we get to anybody, as the young kids by the 1920s,
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at the time of Prohibition, because the law starts in 1920, you have the old timers.
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Now, the brain was allegedly the guy that fixed the 1919 World Series together with an
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ex-Jewish prizefighter by the name of Abe Attell.
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They call it the Black Sox or something like that.
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If I tell people what I'm going to tell you now, they're surprised.
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But we had thousands and thousands of professional prizefighters.
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And up until the middle of the 1930s, one third of the champions of the world were Jewish.
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Up until the 1930s, one third of the prize champions were Jewish.
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One third of the champions of the world were Jewish.
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So very different Jewish reputation then than it is today.
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And it almost seems like when you study the history that they almost took in and they
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shared their secrets and they trade secrets with the Italian and the Irish mob.
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So Arnold Rothstein, he didn't come from the ghetto.
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He came from a middle class Jewish family, very well respected.
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He's the one that actually, in fact, is responsible for the modern day mob.
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He was the original money guy for bootlegging in New York.
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He meets, we need young kids to protect our convoys.
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And if he spotted somebody with potential leadership, like Meyer Lansky or like Lucky
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And he showed them, you're going to make more money with this than you're going to do
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Now you've got an opportunity to make a lot of money through prohibition.
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He got killed because he works on a card game where he claimed that the game was fixed.
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He died with the name of a shooter on his lips.
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The connection between the Jews and the Italians.
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I was talking to this young fellow that you have here today and I explained the common interest
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Lucky Luciano had the brains to see that money could be made with the Jews.
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And Meyer Lansky understood we can make money with the Italians instead of knocking our brains
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The Italians, however, up until 1930, 1931, they were controlled by two forces.
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The wars between Joe the boss Masseria and Salvator Maranzano.
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They fought over the control of the young Turks.
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Young Turks being Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello, Joe Adonis.
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And so the competition was between those two forces from the old black hand.
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They were xenophobic, meaning that they wouldn't.
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We don't want to even do business with guys from Calabria or from Naples.
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The question I want to ask you is the following.
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Over the period of post-war, World War II, you had competition.
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You had competition between Cubans, where they were the new boys on the block post-Castro,
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So when the Cuban mob came here, it was formed, they called themselves La Cooperation.
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They went toe-to-toe with the Italians over the number holes and over the numbers business
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in New York, to the extent that they were burning down each one's number holes.
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And he sat with Fat Tony and they worked out a peace agreement.
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The Albanians and the Italians, but it's always the Italians, the Russians and the Italians.
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But ultimately the Italians, they have these, they have the structure and the power, whether
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it's Puerto Ricans, whether it's Dominicans and so forth and so forth.
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During that time when Lucky, you know, there's Costello himself banned, you know, Meyer,
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they're sitting there and, you know, Rothstein's kind of giving them a, you know, formula.
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Here's how you make your money and don't let the two.
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So in order to do that, they had to kill Joe, the boss, and they had to kill Salvatore
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So the first one they took out was Joe, the boss, and Coney Island, one Jew and three Italians.
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Bugsy Siegel together with three Italians went, did the hit before Joe, the boss, could
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Then they had to take care of Salvatore Marzano.
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In that particular case, Lucky Luciano, it is a good story.
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He goes to Meyer Lansky and he says to them, Meyer, give me four, you guys.
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Because Salvatore Marzano will never recognize four Jews coming in dressed as IRS agents.
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Bugsy, I think one of the guys from Dutch Schultz's outfit.
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And used to tell Meyer Lansky, don't give me an assignment on Shabbat unless it's absolutely
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He wouldn't kill anybody on Saturday unless it had to be taken care of.
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So after they killed those two guys, emerges 1930, 31, the commission and the new crime.
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That's where Lucky Luciano really gets the respect of everybody.
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Because in fact, it was Joe the boss, Masseria, that kidnapped Salvatore Lacania.
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It takes him to his warehouses and threatens him that if you don't come with me, I'm going
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And Lucky Luciano, the name Salvatore Lacania at the time, the original name of Lucky Luciano,
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That's when he went to Meyer and to Benny, to Bugsy, and says, guys, God bless you.
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We'll never succeed as long as we're under the limitations of the repression of these old
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And that's where the Jews and the Italians had a good understanding and excellent understanding
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That's why when I was telling you the story between the Italians and the Cubans.
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See, this Jose Miguel Botley was a hero in the Bay of Pigs.
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He was one of the commanding officers of that unit 4863 or whatever that was, that was part
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So when he came back to the United States, they were, the deal was negotiated so that money
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in medicine went to Cuba to release the guys that were locked up the prisoners on the Bay
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Jose Miguel comes back and forms what's known as La Corporacion.
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And they start getting aggressive in terms of putting out the, the buying, the number
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Now, my involvement, my friendship was with everybody because I was the, the, um, the
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founding father of the gambling machine business.
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I brought back the slot machines from the time that LaGuardia knocked them out in 1941
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I, in 1977, started to put out the first slot machines again.
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So people say to me, where did you get the idea?
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Do you get the balls to do something like that as well?
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I speak every language on the face of the earth and I did business all over the world,
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My father was in the jukebox of vending and cigarette machine business going back prior
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His original partner was Doc Statcher and Abe Green.
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Doc Statcher was the original partner with that gentleman I mentioned before, Longies Willman.
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By the way, Longies Willman waxed extremely rich during the time of prohibition and whack,
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and he was one of the big financiers of the Hollywood movies.
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He, uh, he is, she was the, the Marilyn Monroe of her time.
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So, um, Doc Statcher was the original partner of my father and Longies Willman.
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Longies took the cigarette machine business and my father's was the jukebox business.
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And how did Longies take the, we had Murder Incorporated.
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It should be people just, I'm sure a lot of people are going to be watching this and say,
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We had as many shooters and maybe more than the Italians.
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This is a fantastic story and nobody knows about it.
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With the rise of nationalist socialist ideology in Germany, they come to the United States.
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And he starts to rally, um, and bring together, um, the recent immigrants that came post World War
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Uh, we had a tremendous amount of Germans that came to the United States.
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Newark, New Jersey was originally a large German population.
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The Brit, they call themselves the brown shirts.
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And it was called the Bund, B-O-N-D, which means the organization in, in German.
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My father was part of a, an organization called the Minute Men.
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The Minute Men were all under the supervision, all under the administration of Longies Wilmen.
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And they formed an organization called the Minute Men, which in a minute's notice, just
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like in the Revolutionary War, you would have men available in a matter of a minute to go
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And the British, our guys went to fight the American Nazi Party.
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There was a book called The Nazis in Newark, written by a dear friend of mine, Warren Grover,
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that relates exactly every time that the Nazis would meet, our guys would go in and beat the shit out of these Nazi bastards.
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Meyer Lansky took on the Nazis in Yorkville, up on First Avenue and 86th Street.
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They'd go in with monkey wrenches, with brass knuckles, stink bombs to throw into the place.
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So when they come running out, our guys were waiting there, all right?
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Rising antisemitism today, people say, oh my God, you know.
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The mob in Minneapolis, Dave Berman, Herman Pastors, Sam Turan, wherever the silver shirts,
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another antisemitic organization would meet, our guys were there to beat the shit out of them.
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In Chicago, there was a very famous prize fighter, triple crown champion, hero at Guadalcanal by the name of Barney Ross.
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He fought at Guadalcanal when he was in his thirties.
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In the time of the Nazis, they beat up, they fought the antisemites, the Jew haters in Chicago.
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One of the guys that fought together with Barney Ross was Jacob Rubenstein.
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Some people say, who the hell was Jacob Rubenstein?
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He fought together with all the Jews to defend against antisemites.
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How different was the Jewish community in the thirties versus today?
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So when you're hearing it, hey, antisemite, you know, hey, you know, who you guys are going out there fighting, beating the shit out of everybody versus today, you hear the same message and criticism.
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How different are the communities between those 80 years?
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Well, I think the economics was so much different today.
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For example, the attacks on antisemitism today in the United States are against identifiable Jews, meaning people that cover their heads, black suits, beards.
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They're identifiable, and they're in the inner cities.
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Let's say whether it's Williamsburg, whether it's Brown Heights, Borough Park, and so forth and so forth.
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The Jews in the suburbs haven't really felt it yet.
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Because nobody's going into the wealthy suburban neighborhoods and attacking Jews there.
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The question you're asking me about 80 years ago is that everybody was sharing territory in those days.
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So whether you're identifiable or not, you knew that this was a Jewish neighborhood, and there was the question of, well, we're going to go in there, and we're going to attack Jews.
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Going back to the names you mentioned, and by the way, I want you to finish the story about yourself in 1977 when you said you were doing the slot machines, and that's kind of how you brought it up.
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How big did that get, and what kind of money were you making at the peak?
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They should build a statue for me because I made a lot of guys rich.
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What we were doing was we were taking, we started with slot machines and evolved into video poker machine, and that just broke everything open.
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And when the technology changed and we had a bill acceptor, you could start putting ones, fives, tens, twenties.
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So we calculate that at a certain point in history, we have no fixed figures, but between the fellows that were manufacturing, supplying, and there could have been 200,000 machines throughout the entire city of New York.
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Because if you're living on Park Avenue, you're not going to see it.
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But if you were living in Washington Heights, you walked into every bodega, had slot machines in the back rooms.
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Figure 200,000 and figure each machine average approximately $500 per week per machine.
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So take 200,000 machines and multiply it by $500.
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Now, 50% went to the store owner and 50% went to the operator.
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That business flourished for years, but until it became too competitive, as it became super competitive, that's where the conflicts began.
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You mean to tell me you guys were doing 50 a week?
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So that was between a million, endless number of operators.
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So everybody was kind of sharing that together, the 50 a week that was coming in.
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How much of that 50 was going to you at that time?
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Well, I had New York, I would say, between sales operation, over 100,000.
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So I'm a bit of a unique kind of a character because I never went higher than in terms of
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the kind of lifestyle and no country club, none of this.
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I'm an educated street guy, one of the most educated in terms of everything, Jewish history,
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world of events, current and so forth and so forth.
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So I pursued a lot of that as far as life concerned.
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I'm an heir to an old school Jewish girl from Buenos Aires whose family was from Poland.
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And if we would have told her, come here today, Patrick is going to interview you.
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She worked in a slot machine business in Buenos Aires as the bookkeeper.
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So during this time when you're making that kind of money, did you ever get caught?
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I had three state cases and three federal cases.
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Every time they locked me up, I was back the next day opening, doing business.
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Harold Green was the guy that broke up the ATT monopoly.
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I get locked up with an old time mob guy by the name of Joe, Joe the Possum there's line.
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For promoting slot machines, Joe was probably a little bit senile at the time.
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I'm going to put machines here, put machines there.
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There was no way I was going to win this particular case.
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So my kid cousin says to me, get in touch with your friend,
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And he says, this is the man that helps me pursue Nazi war criminals in South America.
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The letter that Wiesenthal writes to Judge Green.
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Judge Green turns out that he is an escapee from Nazi Germany.
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He gets the letter from Simon Wiesenthal and calls this girl.
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I don't want to hurt her feelings or damage her terrible reputation any worse than it already is.
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And he says, ladies, what am I going to do with this letter?
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Anyways, to make a long story short, she runs back in.
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She said, how do I know what was Simon Wiesenthal?
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The door opens in the chambers of the law of the court.
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And there's a girl comes out and she's smiling at me.
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And my kid cousin says to me, he says, cuz, you know that girl over there?
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I get smiled at all the time by young, pretty women.
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cuz, Mr. Sugarman is a close, intimate associate of Vincent Jimmy Blue Eyes Alloy.
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My kid cousin says to me, cuz, you really know Jimmy Blue Eyes?
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He says, but it says, cuz, I'm telling you, I never met Jimmy Blue Eyes.
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So, this prosecutor, she says to Judge Green, she says,
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by the mere mention of a few Italian-sounding names,
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the government has failed to convince this courtroom that Mr. Sugarman
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So, that pretty little girl was my half-sister.
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He worked for the Gambino Brothers on 18th Avenue,
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The Chronicles of the Last Jewish Gangster
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