Members of the Minutemen, with its founder, Nat Arno, with cigar, at Krueger Auditorium in Newark, 1936. He secretly worked with the U.S. government to infiltrate and break up the Nazi Bund meetings.
Myron Sugerman grew up in Maplewood as the son of Barney Sugerman, a man who partnered in the gambling business with such notorious mob figures as Meyer Lansky and fellow Jerseyan Abner “Longie” Zwillman.
As an adult, Sugerman followed his father into the world of illegal gambling and wound up serving 19 months at the Federal Correctional Complex in Allenwood, Pa., after being convicted on gambling charges.
But he sees the Jewish mobsters who once dominated Newark and other American cities as heroes, not villains — especially in their fight against anti-Semitism and for the birth of Israel.
Sugerman will deliver that message — probably without the profanity — when he speaks on “A History of Jews and the Mob” on Monday evening, Sept. 19, at Chabad of West Orange, where he attends Shabbat services each week.
“They called the Jewish mob ‘the syndicate,’” he said. “They were heroes here in the U.S. during the ’30s.” They were also friends of his father, who, he said, told him about their exploits “with bedtime stories. Other people gave their kids lullabies. Not my father. He told me about the Minutemen,” Jewish vigilantes who took violent aim at local Nazi sympathizers in Irvington, Union, Springfield, and Hillside.
The man who formed the Minutemen was a Newark boxer named Nat Arno (born Sidney Nathaniel Abramowitz) who secretly worked with the United States government to infiltrate and break up the Nazi Bund meetings on the east coast.
After World War II, as European Jews began fighting for a homeland in Palestine, American-Jewish mobsters came to their aid.
In 1946 David Ben Gurion sent Reuven Zaslanski, the first director of the Mossad, to meet with all the “legitimate Jewish organizations” in the United States to ask for funds to help the underground Jewish forces fighting the Arabs in Palestine, Sugerman said.
“You know what all these legitimate organizations told him? ‘Take a walk. We don’t want to get involved.’” These organizations, Sugerman said, were more concerned about violating the neutrality acts passed by Congress in the 1930s to keep the United States out of conflicts.
One might think that a history of Jewish gangsters might not be an appropriate topic for an institution like Chabad.