Meyer Lansky helped the European Jews before WW 2

stubear1012

I have been watching a TV series on the American Mob. Supposedly by the 1930's they were a very rich and powerful organization. Several of the senior members including Meyer Lansky were Jewish. Lets suppose that Meyer and others decide to help the Jews in Germany and the rest of Europe.

How much of a difference would it make if they did some combination of the following actions:

1) Bring behind the scenes pressure to bear on the US State Department to actually fill the quotes on Jewish emigration to the US.
2) Provide financial incentives ie bribes to Cuba and various Central American countries to accept more Jewish emigrants.
3) Provide financial incentives for more Jews to emigrate to Palestine ie bribes for visas and cash donations to buy land/supplies/weapons.

Regards

Stubear1012
 

CarribeanViking

As a general principle, the support of organized crime does not do you any favours in the arena of public and world opinion; this would have to be done very, very covertly indeed if it is not to backfire and add fuel to anti- Semitism and Nazi propaganda in general.

That and he is the wrong man and the wrong organization for this job; mobsters don't come out of the woodwork to apply diplomatic influence, it's the sort of thing that gets them caught. Somebody whose name is something like, oh, say Rothschild, might be better at that.

On the other hand if you want the law subverted and undermined, police blackmailed and intimidated, and things and people smuggled in and out, Jews and the other groups targeted by Nazi bigotry to safety and support for resistance movements shipped in, they may be the people.

Once the shooting starts, in a logical extension of that, the OSS would effectively have to be founded on the basis of existing talent and contacts- which means that a few years later the CIA really is controlled by the Jewish Mafia.

What the hell would all the conspiracy theorists do now? :D
 

oudi14

I always thought that Lansky alone was the only non-Italian to ever reach the highest echelons of the Mob. In any event, I can't see the FDR administration paying any attention to them re: helping Jews, nor do I think anyone in the Mob outside of maybe Lansky would have cared much. The one instance that they might have done something would have been to bribe the Cuban govt. to allow the St. Louis passengers ashore. BTW, the fact that nobody would take those refugees in, was a disgrace to all of the Americas, particularly FDR, politics be damned. They should not have had to return to Europe.
 

ComradeHuxley

Donor
Seems pretty close to OTL:

In the 1930s, Meyer Lansky and his gang claimed to have stepped outside their usual criminal activities to break up rallies held by the pro-Nazi German-American Bund. Lansky recalled a particular rally in Yorkville, a German neighborhood in Manhattan, that he claimed he and 14 other associates disrupted: The stage was decorated with a swastika and a picture of Adolf Hitler. The speakers started ranting. There were only fifteen of us, but we went into action. We threw some of them out the windows. Most of the Nazis panicked and ran out. We chased them and beat them up. We wanted to show them that Jews would not always sit back and accept insults.[10] During World War II, Lansky was also instrumental in helping the Office of Naval Intelligence's Operation Underworld, in which the government recruited criminals to watch out for German infiltrators and submarine-borne saboteurs.
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Now if you really want Lanksky and friends help there is this POD:

One of the great true stories about Bugsy Siegel was that he had the opportunity to kill two major Nazis. They were Hermann Goring and Joseph Goebbels. One of Bugsy’s many mistresses was Dorothy DiFrasso. Her husband was close to Mussolini. The husband also invited various Nazis to stay at his house.
DiFrasso invited Bugsy to stay while these two Nazis were there. Bugsy was just about to kill them when DiFrasso convinced Bugsy if he killed them, then she would be killed. Like Lansky and Luciano, Bugsy was taught style and crime by Arnold Rothstein. Bugsy Siegel mainly dealt in money laundering, gambling, and murder, even though he wasn’t a hit-man (remember, he’s called “Bugsy”, he would kill people anyway). Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was shot dead in his home June 20, 1947. The murder is unsolved.
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GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
As far as bribing State Dept. official(s) to at least fill the refugee quotas,

you generally want to give a modest bribe to someone already predisposed to do it. Like two months of the person's normal salary, or less, not an astronomical figure.

And a mobster's not going to offer the bribe himself, he's going to find a businessman who's predisposed and wants to do it. And the businessman's going to be the one to offer the bribe. That is, a 'connected' guy rather than a 'made' guy.

=====

I think of myself as a humanistic type of person. But just because of mainstream books and TV, often I feel I know more about how to pull off various types of criminal activity, at least in theory, than I know how to do more direct humanitarian activity. (!)
 
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