In the early 20th century, a generation of Jewish gangsters rose from the tenements of New York to build an underworld empire that even the Italian Mafia respected and feared. They came from nothing, learned the streets fast, and turned Prohibition into a fortune. Their story is one of ambition, violence, and a legacy that shaped organized crime in America for decades.
The Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1900 was crowded with Russian and Eastern European Jewish families who had fled persecution and crossed an ocean with nothing. Their children grew up quickly, and the streets taught them what Ellis Island could not.
Arthur Flegenheimer was born in the Bronx in 1902 to German Jewish parents. His father abandoned the family, and the boy turned to the streets, taking the name Dutch Schultz. By 17, he had served time for burglary. When he walked out, Prohibition had arrived.
Benjamin Siegelbaum was born on February 28, 1906, in Brooklyn to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. He grew up poor on the Lower East Side. Handsome, charming, and violent, he was called Bugsy, a name he hated. Men who used it to his face did not live long.
Meier Suchansky was born in Grodno in the Russian Empire on July 4, 1902, and his family immigrated to New York in 1911. He became Meyer Lansky. Small, thin, and smart, he did not look like a gangster, and that was his advantage.
Meyer met Bugsy on Broome Street in 1918. They were teenagers when they formed the Bugs and Meyer Mob, stealing, extorting, and muscling in on crap games. Italian gangs noticed them, and Irish gangs tried to kill them. They survived.
Arnold Rothstein watched from above. Born in 1882 to respectable German Jewish parents, he chose a different path from his businessman father. By 1919, he was the most powerful gambler in New York, operating out of Lindy's restaurant on Broadway. Politicians and gangsters came to him, and he lent them money and taught them to think big.
On October 1, 1919, the Chicago White Sox faced the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. Eight White Sox players accepted bribes and threw games, and the scandal rocked baseball. Rothstein's name surfaced, and though he denied involvement and no charges stuck, everyone knew he was the man who fixed the World Series.
The Volstead Act took effect, and the 18th Amendment made alcohol illegal in the United States. Legitimate businessmen lost their licenses, while criminals saw opportunity. Rothstein moved first, organizing the importation of Canadian whiskey and financing operations without getting his hands dirty. He was the banker and the brain.
Young Jewish gangsters worked under him, including Irving Wexler, known as Waxey Gordon, Louis Buchalter, called Lepke, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Arthur Flegenheimer. New York became a battlefield where Italian, Irish, and Jewish gangs controlled different territories, sometimes fighting and sometimes cooperating because the money was too good for ethnic differences to matter.
Dutch Schultz took over beer distribution in the Bronx, muscled out rivals, and paid off police. He earned thousands per week, then tens of thousands, and expanded into the numbers racket, illegal lottery games in Harlem and the Bronx. He became rich and feared.
Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel worked differently. They were partners who thought strategically and saw the future. In 1929, Lansky met Charles "Lucky" Luciano, an Italian gangster on the rise. The two men recognized something in each other and spoke the same language, not Italian or Yiddish, but the language of money and power.
On February 14, 1929, in Chicago, Al Capone's men massacred seven members of the Bugs Moran gang in a garage. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre shocked the nation, and federal authorities intensified their pursuit of gangsters. Capone went to prison in 1931 for tax evasion, making the message clear: the government could not catch you for murder, but it would catch you for taxes.
Organized crime leaders met in Atlantic City and New York. Italians, Jews, and a few Irish discussed territories and rules, forming what journalists later called the National Crime Syndicate. Charles Luciano became chairman, and Meyer Lansky served as his right hand.
The syndicate created the Commission, a ruling body of crime families including five New York families and families in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Kansas City. It also created an enforcement arm, a group of killers on call, mostly Jewish and Italian, based in Brooklyn and led by Louis Lepke Buchalter and Albert Anastasia. The newspapers called them Murder Incorporated.
Murder Incorporated operated from a candy store in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Abe Reles, known as Kid Twist, was one of their top killers, along with Martin Goldstein and Harry Strauss, called Pittsburgh Phil. These men did not kill for passion but for business, receiving contracts and fulfilling them for payment. Estimates suggest they killed between 400 and 1,000 people during the 1930s.
The operation was efficient. A boss in one city would contact the syndicate, which sent men unknown in that city. They killed and left, leaving no connections and no evidence.
Lepke Buchalter ran the labor rackets, controlling unions in the garment industry, trucking, and bakeries. He ordered strikes, beatings, and murders, operating from the shadows. By the mid-1930s, he was one of the most powerful gangsters in America.
Abner "Longie" Zwillman rose in New Jersey. Born July 27, 1904, in Newark to Jewish immigrants, he was tall and strong. He controlled bootlegging across the state, partnered with Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, and moved Canadian whiskey down the eastern seaboard. He made millions in Newark, was respected, helped Jewish families, and fought Nazi sympathizers.
In the late 1930s, the German-American Bund held rallies in New Jersey. Zwillman organized Jewish gang members to break them up, and they did. The rallies stopped.
Mickey Cohen was born September 4, 1913, in Brooklyn to immigrant parents and moved to Los Angeles as a child. He became a boxer, then a gangster. In 1939, Bugsy Siegel sent for him, and Mickey became his bodyguard, enforcer, and partner in West Coast operations.
Bugsy Siegel arrived in California in 1937, sent by the syndicate to control racing wire services, betting operations, and union rackets. He charmed Hollywood, dated movie stars, dined in expensive restaurants, and wore tailored suits. He looked like a celebrity, but he was a killer.
On December 26, 1946, the Flamingo Hotel opened in Las Vegas on the desert highway known as the Strip. Bugsy Siegel stood at the entrance. It was his dream, a luxury casino in the middle of nowhere, built with syndicate money. Cost overruns plagued the project, and the budget spiraled as his partners in New York grew impatient.
The grand opening was troubled. Bad weather grounded flights, and celebrities did not show. The casino opened anyway, with Jimmy Durante performing and Xavier Cugat's band playing. Some gamblers arrived and won, and the house lost. Within two weeks, Siegel closed the hotel, reopening it in March 1947. Business improved, but the damage was done.
Meyer Lansky, his childhood friend, could not protect him. The syndicate had rules about money missing, cost overruns, and disrespect. On June 20, 1947, Bugsy Siegel sat in Virginia Hill's Beverly Hills mansion when a gunman fired through the window. Nine shots were fired, and two bullets hit Siegel in the head. He died instantly at 41. No one was ever arrested.
Mickey Cohen took over Los Angeles operations and survived 11 assassination attempts over the next decade, including bombs, drive-by shootings, and ambushes in restaurants. He walked away every time and became a media sensation, granting interviews and appearing in newspapers as the gangster as celebrity.
Back east, law enforcement closed in on Murder Incorporated. In 1940, Abe Reles was arrested for murder and faced execution. He made a choice and turned informant, providing details on more than 70 killings, describing methods, locations, and names. His testimony sent several Murder Incorporated members to the electric chair.
On May 40, in Brooklyn, Reles gave a four-hour confession to prosecutors, admitting to six murders personally and describing dozens more committed by others. He named Louis Lepke Buchalter, Albert Anastasia, Martin Goldstein, Harry Strauss, and Harry Maione. The authorities called him the canary who could sing, and his testimony broke Murder Incorporated.
On March 4, 1944, at Sing Sing prison in New York, Louis Lepke Buchalter entered the execution chamber. He was the highest-ranking mobster ever executed in the United States, going to the electric chair for the murder of Joseph Rosen, a Brooklyn candy store owner. At 11:16 p.m., the switch was thrown, and Lepke was dead. Emanuel "Mendy" Weiss and Louis Capone, no relation to Al Capone, were executed the same night. Three men, three jolts from Old Sparky.
The era of Murder Incorporated ended in the electric chair, but Abe Reles never testified against Albert Anastasia. On November 12, 1941, Reles was under police protection at the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island, guarded by six police officers. In the early morning, he fell from a sixth-floor window and died on impact. The official story was suicide, but no one believed it. The newspapers called it the canary who could sing but couldn't fly, and the investigation went nowhere.
Dutch Schultz met his end earlier. On October 23, 1935, at the Palace Chop House in Newark, New Jersey, Schultz sat in the back room with three associates when two gunmen, Charles Workman and Emanuel Weiss, entered and opened fire. Schultz's men died quickly, and Schultz took a bullet to the abdomen. He stumbled to the bathroom and collapsed.
Ambulances arrived, and he was taken to a New York City hospital, where he underwent surgery for 22 hours. He drifted in and out of consciousness, speaking in fragments and delirium. Police stenographers recorded his words, which made no sense. At 8:35 p.m. on October 24, Dutch Schultz died at 33.
The murder was sanctioned by the syndicate. Schultz had wanted to kill Thomas Dewey, the ambitious district attorney prosecuting gangsters. The syndicate said no, because killing a prosecutor would bring too much heat. Schultz planned to do it anyway, so they killed him first.
Meyer Lansky outlasted them all. He avoided arrest and prosecution, moved money, and invested in legitimate businesses. He opened casinos in Cuba under Fulgencio Batista. When Fidel Castro took power in 1959, Lansky lost millions. He moved operations to the Bahamas, to London, and to Las Vegas, becoming the financial genius of organized crime. The FBI investigated him for decades and found nothing that stuck.
Waxey Gordon was not so lucky. By 1932, he controlled beer distribution along the eastern seaboard, partnering with Max Hassel and Max Greenberg. They imported Canadian liquor, brewed beer in Pennsylvania breweries, and distributed to New York, Philadelphia, and New Jersey. Waxey Gordon made millions but spent millions on fancy cars, expensive suits, and mansions.
The government noticed. In 1933, Thomas Dewey prosecuted Gordon for tax evasion. The trial lasted weeks, and the jury convicted him. He was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. When he was released, Prohibition had ended and his empire was gone. He tried to restart and failed. In 1951, he was arrested for selling narcotics. In 1952, he died of a heart attack in Alcatraz prison at 64.
Prohibition ended on December 5, 1933, when the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th. Alcohol was legal again, and the bootlegging empires collapsed overnight. But the gangsters did not disappear. They moved into gambling, narcotics, labor unions, loan sharking, and extortion.
The Jewish gangsters who built the underworld in the 1920s adapted. Meyer Lansky invested in Las Vegas. After Bugsy Siegel's death, Lansky and his partners took control of the Flamingo, and it became profitable. Other casinos followed, including the Sands, the Desert Inn, and the Stardust. Jewish mobsters owned or had interests in many of them, working alongside Italian families as the syndicate operated smoothly.
Lansky traveled frequently. In the 1950s and 1960s, he divided his time between Miami Beach and Havana, becoming the financial adviser to multiple crime families. He laundered money and invested in legitimate businesses. He was meticulous, kept no records, and trusted no one completely.
In 1970, facing federal indictment for tax evasion and money skimming, Meyer Lansky fled to Israel. He arrived in Tel Aviv with his wife Thelma and invoked the Law of Return, which allows any Jew to immigrate to Israel. He applied for citizenship, and Israeli authorities were torn. Lansky was Jewish, but he was also a mobster. The Israeli government debated for two years as public pressure mounted and the United States demanded extradition.
On September 11, 1972, the Israeli Supreme Court denied Lansky's citizenship application, and he was ordered to leave. He flew to South America, but no country would take him. He returned to Miami in 1973 and stood trial for tax evasion. The government's case was weak, and he was acquitted. He lived quietly in Miami Beach until his death on January 15, 1983, at 80. The FBI estimated he was worth hundreds of millions, while his family claimed he died nearly broke.
Mickey Cohen survived into the 1960s. In 1951, he was convicted of tax evasion and served four years. Released in 1955, he returned to Los Angeles. In 1961, he was convicted again for tax evasion on unreported income and sentenced to 15 years, serving most of it in Alcatraz. On August 14, 1963, Cohen was in the Alcatraz recreation yard when another inmate, Burl Estes MacDonald, attacked him with a lead pipe, striking him three times in the head. Cohen survived, but the injuries left him partially paralyzed, and he was transferred to a federal medical facility. Released in 1972, he spent his final years confined to a wheelchair and died in his sleep on July 29, 1976, at 62.
Longie Zwillman's end was quieter. By the 1950s, law enforcement intensified investigations, and Senate hearings on organized crime put pressure on old-guard mobsters. In 1959, Zwillman was scheduled to testify before a grand jury. On February 26, 1959, he was found dead in the basement of his West Orange, New Jersey, mansion, hanging from a plastic-coated wire attached to a ceiling pipe. The medical examiner ruled it suicide, but associates doubted it. Theories circulated about whether it was murder disguised as suicide or whether Zwillman took his own life to avoid prison and humiliation. The truth died with him at 54.
The Jewish gangsters of the early 20th century left an indelible mark on American organized crime. They were not the first criminals, but they were among the most innovative. They created national networks, cooperated across ethnic lines, and modernized the underworld.
Arnold Rothstein taught them to think like businessmen. Meyer Lansky taught them financial discipline. Bugsy Siegel taught them to dream big. Dutch Schultz taught them ruthlessness. Louis Lepke taught them the value of organization and enforcement. Together they built the infrastructure that the Mafia would inherit.
Most of them died violently, shot in restaurants, executed in electric chairs, or beaten in prison yards. A few, like Meyer Lansky, lived long lives and died of natural causes, but their legacy endured. The casinos in Las Vegas, the methods of money laundering, the cooperation between crime families, and the National Crime Syndicate were their inventions.
By the 1960s, the original generation was gone. Their children did not follow them into the life, becoming doctors, lawyers, and businessmen instead. The Jewish gangster became a historical curiosity, a chapter in American crime that closed. The Italian Mafia dominated the headlines, and the Jewish mobsters faded into memory. But in their time, they were kings. They controlled cities, corrupted politicians, and defied the law for decades. They built empires from nothing, came from tenements and sweatshops, and emerged as millionaires. They lived by the gun, and most of them died by it.