Money, Power and Violence: The Story of Charlie Lucky Luciano

Money, Power and Violence: The Story of Charlie "Lucky" Luciano

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by Andrew Williams

Gambino agreed, and in , Anastasia was gunned down in his barbershop. Gambino was now the Godfather of his own family. The Gambino family quickly expanded its rackets across the country. Soon, they were bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars a year, which made Gambino one of the most powerful bosses in the Mafia. Even so, Gambino continued to keep a low profile. While other Mafia leaders fell victim to hits or arrests — many organized by Gambino — he continued his role as Godfather for decades. The police also had a hard time pinning anything on Gambino. After two years of surveillance, the tight-lipped Gambino had refused to give anything up.

In spite of his almost super-human self-control, other made men knew that Gambino was to be feared and respected. One mafia associate, Dominick Scialo, made the mistake of insulting Gambino at a restaurant after getting drunk. Gambino refused to say a word throughout the incident. Gambino continued to rule his family for another few years.

In disturbing numbers young Jews had joined crime " rackets ," it was said, along with children of Irish, Italian and other immigrants. As described by sociologist Stephen Steinberg, less than a sixth of the city's felony arrests were Jews during the s, when Jews constituted nearly a third of the city's population.

As the 20th century progressed, Jewish-American mobsters such as "Dopey" Benny Fein and Joe "The Greaser" Rosenzweig entered labor racketeering, hiring out to both businesses and labor unions as strong arm men. Labor racketeering or "labor slugging" as it was known, would become a source of conflict as it came under the domination of several racketeers including former Five Points Gang members Nathan "Kid Dropper" Kaplan and Johnny Spanish during the Labor slugger wars until its eventual takeover by Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro in Other Jewish organized crime figures involved in controlling labor unions include Moses Annenberg and Arnold Rothstein , the latter reportedly responsible for fixing the World Series.

According to crime writer Leo Katcher, Rothstein "transformed organized crime from a thuggish activity by hoodlums into a big business, run like a corporation, with himself at the top.

Andrew Williams

Rothstein "understood the truths of early 20th century capitalism hypocrisy, exclusion, greed and came to dominate them". According to Cohen, Rothstein was the 'Moses of Jewish gangsters', a rich man's son, who showed the young and uneducated hoodlums of the Bowery how to have style. The stereotypical attire of the American mobster portrayed in movies can partially trace its roots directly to Rothstein.

During prohibition, Jewish gangsters became major operatives in the American underworld and played prominent roles in the distribution of illegal alcohol and the spread of organized crime throughout the United States. Luciano did not discriminate against Jews and valued longtime associates such as Meyer Lansky and Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel.

During this meeting, Luciano and Lansky convinced the Jewish-American mobsters of the benefits of cooperating with the Italian-American Mafia in a newly created consortium called the National Crime Syndicate by the press. At the meeting's conclusion, "Bugsy" Siegel supposedly declared "The yids and the dagos will no longer fight each other. Those Jewish gangsters hostile to the idea of cooperation with non-Jewish rivals gradually receded, most notably Philadelphia bootlegger Waxey Gordon , who was convicted and imprisoned for tax evasion.

For several decades after World War II , the dominant figures in organized crime were second-generation Jews and Italians, often working in concert. As late as the s, Jewish presence in organized crime was still acknowledged as Los Angeles mobster Jack Dragna explained to hitman and later government informant Jimmy Fratianno:.

Mafia in the United States

Meyer's got a Jewish family built along the same lines as our thing. But his family's all over the country. He's got guys like Lou Rhody and Dalitz , Doc Stacher , Gus Greenbaum , sharp fucking guys, good businessmen, and they know better than try to fuck us. Jewish-American organized crime derived from dislocation and poverty, where language and custom made the community vulnerable to undesirables, the sort of thing that fosters criminality among any other ethnicity in a similar situation.

American Jews quietly buried the public memory of the gangster past; unlike the Mafia , famous Jewish American gangsters like Meyer Lansky, Dutch Schultz and Bugsy Siegel founded no crime families. Much like Irish-Americans and other ethnicities with the exception of Italian-American criminal organizations , Jewish-American presence in organized crime began to decline after World War II.

In more recent years, Jewish-American organized crime has reappeared in the forms of both Israeli and Jewish- Russian mafia criminal groups, and Orthodox kidnapping gangs. Several notable Jewish American mobsters provided financial support for Israel through donations to Jewish organizations since the country's creation in Jewish-American gangsters used Israel's Law of Return to flee criminal charges or face deportation.

Prime Minister Golda Meir set out to reverse this trend in when she denied entrance to Meyer Lansky. The Promised Land of Organized Crime? American diplomats expressed concern that Inbal Gavrieli , the niece of one of Israel's most powerful mafia bosses, had been elected to the Knesset as a MK for Likud.

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Some of these newer American-based Jewish gangsters, such as Ludwig Fainberg who has lived in Ukraine, Israel and the United States, but never in Russia , share more in common culturally with Russia and the Soviet republics than their predecessors, such as Meyer Lansky. Israeli mobsters also have had a presence in the United States. The Israeli mafia such as the Abergil crime family is heavily involved in ecstasy trafficking in America.

However, it remains in business today. During the late 19th century and early 20th century, waves of Italians, mostly farmers, craftsmen and unskilled laborers, flocked to America in search of better economic opportunities. The majority of these immigrants were law-abiding, but, as with most large groups of people, some were criminals who formed neighborhood gangs, often preying on those in their own communities. During the s Prohibition era, when the 18th Amendment to the U. Constitution banned the sale, manufacture and transportation of alcoholic beverages, Italian-American gangs along with other ethnic gangs entered the booming bootleg liquor business and transformed themselves into sophisticated criminal enterprises, skilled at smuggling, money laundering and bribing police and other public officials.

During this time, the Sicilian Mafia in Italy, which had flourished since at least the midth century, was under attack from the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini Some Sicilian Mafiosi escaped to the United States, where they got involved in bootlegging and became part of the burgeoning American Mafia. The Mafia in the U. Luciano then masterminded the formation of a central organization called the Commission to serve as a sort of national board of directors for the American Mafia, which by then consisted of at least 20 crime families across the country.

Each of the five New York families received a vote on the Commission when it was established, while the heads of the families in Chicago and Buffalo also got one vote each. Typically, each American Mafia crime family was organized around a hierarchy headed by a boss, who ruled with unquestioned authority and received a cut of every money-making operation taken on by any member of his family.

Each family also had a consigliere, who acted as an advisor and ombudsman.

Lucky Luciano | www.farmersmarketmusic.com

Becoming an official member of a Mafia family traditionally involved an initiation ceremony in which a person performed such rituals as pricking his finger to draw blood and holding a burning picture of a patron saint while taking an oath of loyalty. Becoming a member of the Mafia was meant to be a lifetime commitment and each Mafiosi swore to obey omerta, the all-important code of loyalty and silence.

With the repeal of Prohibition in , the Mafia moved beyond bootlegging and into a range of underworld activities, from illegal gambling to loan-sharking to prostitution rings.

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