Features
New book looks at the fight by law-abiding Jews to rein in the New York Jewish underworld in early 20th century
The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld
Reviewed by BERNIE BELLAN For those readers who can remember the story of “The Untouchables,” the crime-fighting unit led by Elliot Ness, which was established by the Bureau of Prohibition in the US in the 1930s, tales of shoot-outs between courageous crime-fighting “good guys” and villainous underworld bootleggers and other assorted criminals would probably be thought of as something that wouldn’t have its origin in a Jewish-led crime-fighting unit established several years earlier.
But, would you believe that not too many years before the often bloody events that were depicted in “The Untouchables” came to pass there was another organization in New York City – led by Jewish crime fighters at that time, which had a somewhat tacit affiliation with the New York City Police Department, and whose purpose was to wage war on Jewish criminals on New York’s East Side? That organization was known as “The Incorruptibles” and the story how it came to be created is told in a fascinating new book, titled “The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld,” written by a New York crime reporter by the name of Dan Slater.
As someone who has long had a fascination with shady Jewish characters, I’ve come to realize over the years that a rollicking good story of a Jewish mobster, such as the close friendship a former Winnipegger by the name of Al Smiley had with the notorious Bugsy Siegel, about which Martin Zeilig wrote for The Jewish Post & News in March 2017, resonates with readers in ways that stories about more righteous Jews don’t.
While Martin’s story about Al Smiley was by no means the first story we’ve ever had about Jewish mobsters, a quick search of our online archive would lead you to numerous stories about Jewish gangsters and other assorted criminals.
In the summer of 2023 we ran two stories in relatively rapid succession that elicited a higher than usual amount of interest from readers. One was my review of a book called “Jukebox Empire,” about someone by the name of Wilf Rabin, who actually grew up in Morden, Manitoba. The other story was about bootlegger Bill Wolchock, written by Bill Redekopp, and which appeared in our 2023 Rosh Hashanah edition. Later, when I posted that story to our website it received so many views that I’ve returned it to our home page twice since. (You can now read that story if you missed it by reading it here: “Booze, Glorious Booze“
All this serves as a preamble to my review of “The Incorruptibles.” I have to couch what I’m about to write with an admission: As a youngster growing up in a sheltered environment, and attending the Talmud Torah, where all we were ever told about was Jewish “heroes,” and the only villains were Jews who didn’t lead properly observant lives, reading “The Incorruptibles” came as a real shock to my conception of how much Jews could be associated with the most sordid type of criminal activity.
It’s one thing to realize that many Jews were involved with bootlegging – something that has developed an almost romantic connotation over the years through books, movies and television programs, but to learn that in the latter part of the 19th century Jews in New York were in control of that city’s: prostitution (and most prostitutes were Jewish!); drugs (however, with the understanding that drugs, including heroin and cocaine, were legally available in the U.S. until 1907 and could be readily purchased in pharmacies); gambling; and protection rackets – does come as somewhat of a shock to a sheltered Winnipeg Jew.
Dan Slater’s depiction of life in New York City at the turn of the 20th century is unremittingly harrowing. For the first part of the 20th century the lower East Side of New York was the most densely populated area on Earth. Housing conditions were horrible and the hundreds of thousands of new immigrants arriving yearly – beginning in the 1870s, from what was known as the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe – fleeing persecution and pogroms, found themselves being shunted into unspeakably barbaric working conditions in lower East Side factories, predominantly garment factories – owned by fellow Jews. (The author actually spends a considerable amount of time explaining how exactly the Pale of Settlement came into being and how sudden and incredibly violent wholesale persecution of hundreds of thousands of Jews could happen almost overnight – with the death of a particular czar, for instance.)
It was amidst this churning cesspool of a city that Jewish criminal activity of all sorts ran rampant. Two images from “The Incorruptibles” in particular haunted me. One was Slater’s explanation how so many young Russian Jewish women – most in their early or mid-teens, and only recently arrived in New York, were forced into prostitution. Many of these young women would go to a dance – looking to find some relief from the slave-like conditions that permeated the factories in which they worked. While at the dance, they would be approached by a young Jewish man who would offer them a drink. These guys, known in the colloquial as “Alphonses,” or, in Yiddish, as “schimchas,” would lace the girls’ drinks with drugs (a common occurrence to this day) and take the girls home, where they would rape them. But – now defiled, the girl could not possibly return to her family home out of shame; thus, tens of thousands of young Jewish women were forced into prostitution.
The other image that haunts me was the widespread practice of “horse poisoning.” Protection rackets have probably been around from time immemorial, but in this particular incarnation, criminals would confront business owners with a choice: Pay for “protection” or see your means of transportation (and remember, this was at a time when a horse-drawn buggy or carriage was the principal means of transportation) poisoned.
(There is actually a photo in “The Incorruptibles” of a horse lying dead on a New York street after it had been poisoned. Apparently it happened on a regular basis to the point where it didn’t draw much attention.)
While the book chronicles one sordid story after another so that the reader can understand just how tough life was on the lower East Side – often with reference to the colourful names of some of the most famous Jewish thugs who terrorized their fellow Jews, such as “Bald Jack Rose” or “Big Jack Zelig” (no relation to Martin Zelig – I checked), the biggest mobster of them all was the legendary Arnold Rothstein.
Rothstein is undoubtedly most famous for reputedly having fixed the 1919 World Series by bribing eight members of the Chicago White Sox, the overwhelming favourite to defeat the Cincinnati Reds, to throw the series. (It has never been proven absolutely conclusively that Rothstein did that, but as “The Incorruptibles” explains, the evidence points overwhelmingly in his direction.)
Rothstein was the kind of gambler who could lose $350,000 in a single night of playing poker – and not worry about it.
Here is an example of Slater’s ability to describe a character, when he sums up Arnold Rothstein: “Picture in one individual a sentimental and tender lover, a genial and humorous companion, a charitable giver, a loyal friend—and—a wholesale drug dealer, a crooked sports fixer, a welching gambler, a stolen securities fence, a rum-ring mastermind, a corrupter of police, a grafter through politics, a gunman, a judge-briber, a jury-tamperer, a blackmailer, a pool shark, a swindler.”
But, up against the villains of “The Incorruptibles,” Slater also depicts the stories of two very talented – and brave, young Jewish men, who were willing to challenge the criminal class: A lawyer by the name of Harry Newburger and Abe Shoenfeld, the son of a well-known New York reformer by the name of Mayer Shoenfeld.
As Slater explains, it was only when members of New York’s largely German-Jewish upper class began to take note of the horrid conditions in which the vast majority of the Eastern European Jews who had recently immigrated to America were living did an impetus to try and change things develop. Two men, Jacob Schiff (who is described as the J.P. Morgan of his day in terms of his vast wealth), and Felix Warburg, together with the rabbi of the leading temple of its day, Rabbi Judah Magnes of Temple Immanu-El, organized a group known as the “Kehilah.”
The Kehilah mandated Newburger and Shoenfeld to do whatever they deemed necessary to begin cleaning up the lower East Side. Of course, given how corrupt New York officials were at the time – under the control of the notorious Tammany Hall, led by “Big Jim Sullivan,” most of the New York City Police Department was also thoroughly under the control of criminals, which made the challenge set out for Newburger and Shoenfeld all the more difficult.
The book describes, sometimes in painful detail, the difficulties faced by the group assembled by Newburger and Shoenfeld, known, naturally, as “The Incorruptibles.” They weren’t above busting heads themselves, it turns out.
Again, one of the more interesting aspects of history to emerge from this book is that men would often switch sides at the drop of a hat – to go from violently attacking one particular group – at the behest of this or that mobster, to attacking the same group they were supposed to be defending the next day.
As has already been noted, the garment trade played a pivotal role in the development of New York City into becoming not only a magnet for immigrants, it also also played a prominent role in New York’s becoming the vast economic powerhouse that it is today. Slater notes that, at one point, 80 percent of all garments produced in the U.S. came from the lower East Side.
As workers began to organize themselves into unions, garment factory owners hired thugs, known as “shtarkers” (strong men) to beat up workers, occasionally to kill union organizers. In time though, the tide began to turn and, as unions gathered strength, the same tactics of violence and intimidation that had been used against workers began to be employed by unions – with workers who dared to cross picket lines (known colloquially as “scabs”) often being on the receiving end of that violence, occasionally ending with them being killed.
Newburger and Shoenfeld were thrust into the midst of this turmoil, trying to bring some peace to the labour disputes. Ironically, Mayer Shoenfeld (Abe’s father) was a longtime advocate for workers’ rights, but he would not talk to his son, who tried to straddle both worlds – of employers and employees.
“The Incorruptibles” describes the many battles fought to rein in the gambling, prostitution, protection rackets, and what became the illegal drug trade that were part and parcel of life on New York’s East Side. As the years went by, the Jewish dominance of the New York underworld gave way to the ascendance of the Italian mob. (Slater also acknowledges the roles that other groups also played in New York criminal activity, including the Irish), but his main focus is on Jewish criminals.
“The Incorruptibles” is a long and detailed book, drawing upon a great many different sources, and at times, the proliferation of names entering the scene can be more than a little confusing. But, for anyone who has an interest in reading something that peels back the layers of a very disturbing aspect of Jewish history that might not fit all that well with the notion of Jewish righteousness, then “The Incorruptibles” might be of interest.
“The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld”
By Dan Slater
432 pages
Published by Little, Brown and Company, 2024
Features
Famous Gambling Scandals and Controversies: Allyspin Casino Opinion
The gambling industry is full of scandals and controversies. There are various cases of fraud and manipulation schemes. That is why it is very important to pay attention to reliable gambling sites like Allyspin online casino, which follows the rules of responsible and safe gambling for its fans. Research shows that more than one trillion dollars are bet worldwide every year. That is why it is very important to be able to distinguish safe and reliable sites from fraudulent ones.
Casino Fraud and Money Laundering
Honest and secure gambling websites like Allyspin casino are careful not to fall victim to scammers. However, many sites are often targets for money laundering and fraud. Due to the large volume of transactions and cash flow, it is difficult to track all the directions of the flow of funds.
Among the largest scandals, the Crown Resorts in Australia stands out. An investigation showed that the casino was used to launder millions. Macau casino networks have also been involved in high-profile scandals. Thus, the region has faced close attention due to allegations of organized crime and laundering billions of dollars through betting. In addition, there are many money laundering cases in Las Vegas casinos.
There are many different methods of money laundering in online casinos. For example, fraudsters use chip dumping, cashing out winnings. Also, structuring is used by entering small amounts that are difficult to track over time.
Gambling Industry Reforms after Scandals
Sites like Allyspin casino do everything possible to prevent such scandals. Thus, the latest security measures and solutions are actively implemented:
Advanced fraud detection based on artificial intelligence. With the help of modern algorithms, monitoring of suspicious behavior when placing bets is simplified.
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The Future of Casino Security and Fraud Prevention
Large sites like Allyspin casino continue to expand, introducing enhanced security and fraud prevention tools. In the near future, such unique features will be available:
Fraud detection systems based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Automation of processes helps to detect any fraudulent facts much faster compared to traditional methods.
Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency payments help not only simplify payments for users, but also reduce the risks of unauthorized transactions.
Biometric and multi-factor authentication. Thus, users undergo unambiguous identification, which reduces the risk of account use by fraudsters.
Cybersecurity plays an important role in online casino gambling. Modern sites implement the latest mechanisms to combat fraud, ensure fair gaming process and fully protect honest players.
Features
Canada Is Failing Its Students on Holocaust Education — Here’s What Must Change
By EMILY (surname withheld by request) We received the following article from a third-year Health Sciences student at Western University, who wrote that as “a Jewish student, I have seen firsthand how Holocaust education in Canada is falling short and how that failure is contributing to fear, misinformation, and rising antisemitism on campuses like mine.”
Despite curriculum requirements, Holocaust education in Canada is alarmingly inadequate. A recent survey found that nearly one in five young Canadians believe the Holocaust has been exaggerated. This highlights a dangerous gap in historical understanding, leaving students vulnerable to misinformation, denial, and rising antisemitism. If Canada is serious about combating hate, it must take Holocaust education far more seriously.
When asked whether Holocaust education in Canada is lacking, Professor Hernan Tessler-Mabe, historian and coordinator of Jewish Studies at Huron University, did not hesitate: “You are 100 percent correct.”
While most provinces claim to include Holocaust education in their curricula, the programming and implementation of curriculum tends to be inconsistent and inadequate. A student’s understanding of one of history’s greatest atrocities depends heavily on where they go to school, which teacher they have, and whether their school offers substantive instruction. The result is misinformation, denial, and rising antisemitism.
Avoiding Holocaust education allows dangerous myths and conspiracy theories to spread unchecked. Without an understanding of the Holocaust and the centuries of antisemitism that preceded it, students are ill-equipped to identify modern antisemitism in the world around them. This antisemitism manifests into everyday conversation, online spaces, and political discourse.
To address this crisis, Canada must act with urgency in three key areas. These include consulting experts, confronting difficult material, and properly training educators.
First, schools and provincial governments must consult those who specialize in Holocaust history and education. “It is the most important thing,” Dr. Tesler-Mabé, Associate Professor and Coordinator of Jewish Studies at Huron University says. He points out, “You cannot just throw it into a general history class and assume it will be taught well. You need people who understand both the history and how to teach it.”
Second, we must accept that the subject is deeply disturbing and cannot be made comfortable. Dr. Tesler-Mabé iterates, “We have to accept that parts of this will be traumatic or triggering.” “Obviously it depends on grade level, but if students do not feel disturbed by it, they will not understand it. That discomfort is part of the learning.”
Third, teachers must be prepared. Many educators may feel unequipped to teach this material and either gloss over it or skip it altogether. Training programs and partnerships are essential. In Ottawa, the Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship (CHES) works to connect schools with survivor testimonies and support resources, but broader reach and investment are needed.
Dr. Tesler-Mabé explains, “We have to teach the teachers, especially now that we are losing survivors. That raises a whole new concern. How do you teach something this heavy, this complex, without first hand testimony? Educators need the tools, the background, and the sensitivity to do it well.”
Some may argue that Canada already does enough in this area. After all, Holocaust education is present in some curricula, and many students visit Holocaust museums or hear from survivors. But occasional exposure is not enough. The widespread prevalence of Holocaust denial and the proliferation of antisemitic conspiracy theories underscore significant shortcomings in current systems designed to combat such misinformation. A 2022 report by UNESCO and the United Nations, in collaboration with the World Jewish Congress, found that 16.2% of Holocaust-related content on major social media platforms either denied or distorted fundamental facts about the Holocaust. A standardized, rigorous, and mandatory approach is the only way forward.
Holocaust education is not just about history, it is about safeguarding the future and combating antisemitism in modern manifestations. When students understand how propaganda, scapegoating, and dehumanization led to one of history’s darkest chapters, they are better equipped to recognize and reject hatred in all its forms. Without a solid foundation in Holocaust education, antisemitism continues to fester, not just in online spaces, but within universities, workplaces, and public discourse. We are already seeing the consequences of unchecked Holocaust denial and rising antisemitism, from bias in professional spaces to hostility on university campuses. As a Jewish student at Western University, I have seen fear take hold among my peers. Friends who once wore Stars of David or spoke openly about their heritage now hesitate to do so. I have also begun to question whether it is safe to express my identity. With the last generation of Holocaust survivors passing, the responsibility to preserve their stories and the lessons they teach rests with all of us. If we do not confront this crisis at its root, we risk allowing history to repeat itself in new and dangerous ways.
Canada is failing its students. In doing so, it is failing the promise of Never Again. The question is not whether we should strengthen Holocaust education, but why we have not already.
Features
Anna Kaplan one of Winnipeg’s youngest personal trainers
By MYRON LOVE It is always uplifting to read (or, from my perspective, to write) about people who have been able to reinvent themselves – and even more so when such an individual can use her own transformation to inspire others. Such is the case with Anna Kaplan, a young (21) personal trainer whose passion for physical fitness grew out of personal troubles as a teenager.
“I had a feeling of being excluded,” says the daughter of Kevin and Roxanne Kaplan. “I was afraid that I was missing out. I was losing friends. I had developed some bad habits and was at a real low point in my life – at rock bottom.”
At 18, Kaplan determined to change her life. She began working with a personal trainer and going to the gym. She also changed her dietary habits.
“Before long, I was feeling better mentally and physically,” she recalls.
Two years ago, wanting to help others struggling to improve their lives, Kaplan opened A Plus Fitness. On her Facebook page, she notes that “When you sign up for online training with A Plus Fitness, you’re not just getting a workout plan — you’re getting full access to our all-in-one training app designed to support your transformation every step of the way.”
Kaplan started A Plus Fitness strictly as an online business for which she developed her own app. “I started building my client base initially by contacting friends and acquaintances via a social media platform to see what interest there might be out there,” she says.
With demand for her services growing, about a year ago she began working with clients in person out of a gym on Portage Avenue. In just two years, she reports, business has grown to the point where she has had to hire a second trainer.
“I work with people ranging from 18 to 65 plus,” she says. “The number of clients has tripled in the last year and I have been able to help over 100 clients to get into shape and change their lives.”
The reviews have been outstanding with many giving the young fitness trainer a 5 out of 5 rating. Says one client: ”I’ve been training with Anna for a while now, and it’s been an amazing experience! She really takes the time to understand my goals and pushes me in the best way possible. Since working with her, I feel stronger, more motivated, and more confident in my workouts.”
Adds another: “Over the past year, A Plus Fitness has completely transformed my approach to working out, helping me tone my body and build strength in ways I never thought possible. Anna’s guidance and personalized training plans have made a huge difference in my progress, pushing me to achieve results faster than I expected.”
Kaplan feels good that among those she has been able to help have been her own mother, Roxanne Kaplan, who says that ”I’ve always had some sort of fitness routine in my life. I followed along with the fitness videos with the weights that were recommended – I’d go through phases but never stuck to it. With Anna’s coaching and sticking to her program, I see muscle definition that I’ve never had before. I feel better, more confident, and well rested.”
Kaplan further points out that, in additions to helping people through her business, she is also community minded. “I have helped with several fundraising events in the Jewish community,” she reports.
Most recently, she helped raise money for the Reid Bricker Mental Wellness Fund in memory of a relatively young member of our community who struggled with mental health for several years before committing suicide 10 years ago. The fund aims “to increase the availability of mental health supports and education across the province while ensuring that individuals and families facing mental health challenges receive the support they need when they need it the most.”
Next for Anna Kaplan and A Plus Fitness is to open her own location at some point in the next few years.
Readers can contact Anna at 204 391-5832 or mail her at admin@aplusfit.ca.